The birth centenary of Roald Dahl, one of the greatest children’s authors of Britain, fell on September 13. The British Council had organised several events during the month of September to commemorate this milestone.
The reading challenge is one of our programs that aimed to encourage children to read more books. Every year this program has a different theme. This year it was ‘The Big Friendly Read’ which celebrates Roald Dahl’s centenary (2016 marks 100 years since his birth in 1916) and features some of Roald Dahl’s best-loved characters and the amazing artwork of his principal illustrator, Sir Quentin Blake.
At the British Council, children were encouraged to read on a giant scale and highlighted themes such as invention, mischief and friendship, all of which are explored in Roald Dahl’s most famous books. Children were also requested to explore similar themes, fantastic facts, characters and stories across the best contemporary children’s writing.
Creative writing programs were conducted by one of the leading English authors of Sri Lanka, Prashani Rambukwella. The workshops were aimed at introducing children to concepts of creative writing, whilst making sure they had a lot of fun and got a chance to display their talents. The children were also given the opportunity to read out the stories they had written.
A cartoon workshop was also conducted by the renowned Sri Lankan cartoonist Nirosh Perera. The workshop was based on The BFG and the children drew its scenes and characters. Each child submitted their drawings of a scene from a Roald Dahl book. An exhibition of the art work created by the children based on Roald Dahl stories were on display at the Library.
There was a movie screening of The BFG held at the library and was followed by a series of film adaptations of Roald Dahl’s beloved classics.
We screened the film Matilda celebrating World Children’s Day as well, at our new branch at Orion City, Colombo 9. You may contact our British Council libraries in Colombo, Kandy and Jaffna if you wish to run these reading programs in your school or education institute and to get more information on our programs.