PHILIPSBURG:— Teenagers do not read books for pleasure anymore! Instead, they are focused on social media, games, and movies. What is wrong about reading a book? How can we encourage them to read books again? Books have so much to offer. They can lead you to another world, share other visions and experiences, excite your emotions, and entertain you. How can a library be instrumental to stimulate young people reading books again? That’s the question.
The Philipsburg Jubilee Library (PJL) embarked on an educational experiment. A group of twenty teenagers and young adults were selected to participate. They were asked to read the book ‘Everything, Everything’ by Nicola Yoon. All of them read a chapter of the book in front of a camera to an invisible audience. After the reading sessions, they were invited to discuss the book from different angles; again in front of a camera. The discussion was lead by a professional social worker. The subjects were derived from the book: risk-taking, relationships, domestic violence and abuse, and the tensions between fantasy and the real world or between inner life against outer life. By doing this, the participants were challenged to voice their opinion about the book, but also about themselves as a person.
During the experiment, the participants went through all kinds of different stages. They empathized with the main characters, they formed their opinion about them, they translated what they read into their own life, they shared all of that with their peers, and they had a lot of fun.
Do you want to hear or see our participants in action? Just tune in on one of the following channels:
Date Subject Time and channel Monday, October 12, 2020 Relationships 6 p.m. on Facebook: stmaarten.Pjlibrary 6 p.m. on Cable TV115 and TV15 6.30 p.m. on TV Carib Tuesday, October 13, 2020 Risks and risk-taking 6 p.m. on Facebook: stmaarten.Pjlibrary 6 p.m. on Cable TV115 and TV15 6.30 p.m. on TV Carib Wednesday, October 14, 2020 Fantasy verse reality 6 p.m. on Facebook: stmaarten.Pjlibrary 6 p.m. on Cable TV115 and TV15 6.30 p.m. on TV Carib Thursday, October 14, 2020 Domestic abuse 6 p.m. on Facebook: stmaarten.Pjlibrary 6 p.m. on Cable TV115 and TV15 6.30 p.m. on TV Carib Sunday, October 18, 2020 Special: all subjects 8 p.m. on TV115 and TV15
Do you want to learn more about our educational experiment or would you like to participate in the next experiment, just contact your library?
The other good news is, that the PJL has a lot of other books in their teenagers’ collection. And if you do not want to come to the PJL, you can even download the book of your choice via the PJL website. Our digital library is always open with more than a thousand e-books for teenagers. We also can give you access to the wide collection of e-books from the digital library of the Kingdom Library. Be a library member, and enjoy all those opportunities.
Our contact information: Walter. J.A. Nisbeth Road # 3 (above Adolphus Richardson), Phone:+ 1 721 542 2970, Website: stmaartenlibrary.org, Facebook: stmaarten.Pjlibrary, Twitter: sxmlibrary.
This experiment was also made possible by the support of the Sint Maarten business community: TV Caribe; Telem Group of Companies; Coffee Lounge.
