Books

This term we had to write speeches and then read it to the class here is mine:

Have you ever gone up to a teacher asking about something and they said “go look in a book!” Do you wonder who came up with this brilliant idea? Was it the Greeks or the Romans or the Egyptians? Do you want to know how they help us? Well I will tell you how important they are to us!

Books go a looooong way back in history. Kids didn’t sit around watching TV or playing on computers, because those weren’t invented yet! They read books! Books were amazing when a child had nothing to do! Now who is the genius behind this contraption? At first books were just words written on clay tablets, metal sheets or the bark of trees!

The Egyptians then created papyrus and started the tradition of scrolls. The Greeks decided to copy them and, when the Romans conquered Greece, also began to use scrolls. The early Christians wanted to be different to the others and so made codex. Codex is a lot like modern books but they are made of wood or some other material. Codex became used regularly in Europe around the 5^th century. Then the Arabs made the paper books we use today! That’s a lot of different types of books!

Did you know the first book ever printed by printer-press was the bible?

The other thing you may be wondering about is how do books help us? Well we learn to read and we read to learn don’t we? Even fiction books are helpful for learning because we’re extending our imagination which means we’ll have lots of ideas for writing. And if the teacher wants to do something out of the classroom she, or he, can say “take out your reading books and do some silent reading until I get back.” And lastly if it’s a horrible rainy day and someone is on the computer and you don’t want to watch TV then go into your room with a nice chapter book and read a while.

Can you guess the top 5 most read books in the world?
5.The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho 65 Million copies
4.Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien 103 Million copies
3.Harry Potter 400 Million copies
2.The Little Red Book by Mao Tse-tung 820 Million copies
1. The Bible 3.9 Billion copies!

In Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate factory the Oompa-Loompas said, Oh, books, what books they used to know, those children living long ago! So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install a lovely bookshelf on the wall. Then fill the shelves with lots of books, Ignoring all the dirty looks, the screams and yells, the bites and kicks, and children hitting you with sticks- Fear not, because we promise you that, in about a week or 2 of having nothing else to do they’ll now begin to feel the need of having something good to read. And once they start- oh boy, oh boy! You watch the slowly growing joy that fills their hearts. They’ll grow so keen they’ll wonder what they’d ever seen in that ridiculous machine, that nauseating, foul, unclean. Repulsive television screen! And later, each and every kid will love you more for what you did.

I agree with the Oompa-Loompas, about children loving books. That’s all I have to say for now, Thanks for listening.(or reading in our case lol )
(: