Art Central
Reading Is Fun
Books can be read with your eyes and with your fingertips! Discover special days for book lovers, and the boy who invented a way for blind people to read.
Did you know?
Louis Braille, who was blind, invented a reading system of raised dots in 1824, when he was just 15 years old. Each letter is made using up to six dots, which readers feel with their fingertips.
World Book Day is celebrated on 23 April. UNESCO picked this date partly because the great writer William Shakespeare died on 23 April. In Catalonia, Spain, it is also called 'The Day of Books and Roses'!
India celebrates National Reading Day on 19 June, in memory of P. N. Panicker. He started a library in 1926 and helped about 6,000 libraries in Kerala work together. Their slogan was 'Read and Grow'.
Try this: Book Spine Poetry
Pick five or six books from your shelf or school library. Stack them one on top of another so that the titles on their spines can be read from top to bottom like a short poem or a funny sentence. Swap the order around until it sounds just right. Copy your 'spine poem' into a notebook and read it aloud to your family!
Go further: Reading with Fingertips
Braille is not a language. It is a way of writing many languages with raised dots. Each braille 'cell' has room for six dots, in two columns of three. The letter 'a' is just the top-left dot. For 'b', add the dot just below it. For 'c', use two dots side by side along the top. Louis Braille's birthday, 4 January, is celebrated as World Braille Day.