The campaign for World Book Day 2005 was marked by the use of a photograph from the Special Collections of the National Library which depicted a group of children standing in line outside a mobile library in the Cape Town suburb of Bonteheuwel in 1963. The use of this photograph allowed us to draw attention to the parlous state of the public library service in general and the mobile library services in particular. The run of 50 000 posters was distributed by Allied Media to all our established depots in the 9 provinces.

In an effort to generate some publicity for the World Book Day campaign the Cape Community Newspapers was approached to run the poster as a feature in their various community newspaper titles with the specific hook of inviting the people on the photograph to contact the Centre for the Book and the newspaper. The poster was featured in 3 issues of the Athlone News from the beginning of the month of April and 3 people contacted us to confirm that they were indeed in the photograph. The Athlone News also conducted a substantial interview with 2 of them, namely Sonia Sauls and Colin Valentine, in which they spoke of their love for books and reading and the influence that the mobile library service had on their lives. The third person, Jasmina Khan, is now a teacher at Cedar Primary School in Bonteheuwel. At our special ceremony held at the Centre for the Book on Friday 22 April, we presented Sonia, Colin and Jasmina with framed copies of the poster.

The Edutrain Project, a dual initiative between Metrorail: Western Cape and the Western Cape Education Department, also ran a week-long campaign around books and reading, and on Tuesday 19 April I was invited to conduct a short creative writing exercise with learners from the Hendrik Louw Primary School of the Strand on the Edutrain’s journey from Strand to Cape Town. Before their return journey from the Cape Town Station they were greeted by the Western Cape MEC for Education, Cameron Dugmore, who spoke to them about the importance reading and books, specifically mentioned the work of the Centre for the Book. A cover feature of this event appeared in that week’s edition of the Metrorail Blits newspaper which is distributed free-of-charge to all train commuters in the city. An article about this by Theresa Smith also appeared in the Weekend Argus edition of 23 April.

The creative writing competition for Grade 7 and 8 learners from the Cape Peninsula also once again generated a great deal of interest. In excess of 150 entries were received from 12 schools around the city with the 10 best entries coming from 6 schools. Five of the best entries were in Xhosa, three in English and two in Afrikaans. The initial workshops for teachers and librarians offered during the month of February were attended by a total of 48 participants representing 22 schools and 5 public libraries. The workshops were conducted by Maire Fisher, an ex-teacher and now workshop facilitator who is very well acquainted with the methodologies of workshop presentation through her work with Anne Schuster who has conducted all our previous workshop programmes.

The inclement weather on Friday 22 April may have had a detrimental effect on the volume of attendances to our programme of events at the Centre for the Book but certainly did not affect the enthusiasm of those people who found the time to join us on the day. In a late morning discussion session entitled, “Librarians on the move,” we hosted Christine Fransman, Desiree Reid, Nazli Pandit and Neil Jacobs of the Cape Town City Library Services who recounted their experiences of working on the municipal mobile library services, while Veronica Jacobs of the Elgin Learning Foundation spoke of her work in taking a mobile library service to the rural areas. The conversation was facilitated by Lorato Trok of the Isiqalo Project of the Centre for the Book. The discussion was passionate, informative and thought-provoking and is certainly a subject which should be pursued further. Melanie Stark of the Discovery Centre at the Cape Peninsula Technical University was unable to attend but submitted some very interesting research results of their Ideas Truck initiative which serviced the Khayelitsha area up until last year.

During the afternoon the South African Council for English in Education presented a grand finale to their Spelling Competition and they brought senior high school students from more than 10 schools to the Centre for the Book. For our ceremony to mark the end of our World Book Day creative writing competition we had novelist Sindiwe Magona as our very special guest and she delivered an inspiring speech about the role that reading has played in her life. The book prizes were donated by the following publishers, namely, Heinemann, Maskew Miller Longman, Penguin Books, S.T.E. and Nasou-Via Afrika.

The lecture reading on the life of John Keats by author and editor Robin Malan, entitled, “Love and Fame in the Life of Junkets,” was a wonderful success with over 60 people in attendance. The second instalment of the “Impossible Books Quiz” was also very successful with questions relating to South African literature in all languages being put to the teams, namely the “Dog-ears” – publisher and poet Gus Ferguson, bookseller Henrietta Dax and librarian Adinda Vermaak, and the “Bookmarks” – academic and poet Abner Nyamende, editor and academic Helen Moffet and publisher Nelléke de Jager. Although only 70 odd people attended this event, it again proved to be a highly enjoyable and rewarding end to the end of celebrations for World Book Day.