We generally have a good system at home: no matter what happens, there is always a bedtime story. Generally. But there are those days when extra murals run late, homework piles up and before you know it, time has slipped by before we have had a moment to read. As a result, I have had to sometimes get creative with my family to sneak reading into our everyday lives - even if it is just 15 minutes a day.
Every Tuesday, an enterprising church minister from Rondebosch packs a box of theatre props and heads out to a nutrition rehabilitation centre in Crossroads on the Cape Flats. There, he tells stories and reads books to young children for who the squatter camp is both home, and the full extent of their worlds. As he arrives, they gather excitedly around his car, eager to help carry in the toys and finger puppets that make the stories come alive.
My favourite time all the way through school was at the end of a day, when our English teacher would say, “Put everything away, put your heads on your desks, shut your eyes and listen.” Then we would travel in our minds through the vivid worlds of storybook authors, sometimes familiar and sometimes strange, but always carried by the familiar and accomplished rhythm of our teacher’s reading voice.
On International Translation Day (30 September 2013), we celebrated the invaluable role of children’s literature in translation in bringing children together through story.
What greater hope could we have for our youngest citizens than that they grow up marvelling at and wanting more of the treasury of stories from the vast patchwork of world culture, past and present? Stories that have travelled and crossed borders through translation allow us all to discover what it means to be human, in both unique and shared ways.
