Storytime Volunteers And Book Donations From Bertelsmann For Read Aloud Day
Last Friday, numerous employees from various Bertelsmann companies once again participated in Germany’s Read Aloud Day. This was the 20th time Bertelsmann participated in the event, which this year was held under the heading “Vorlesen schafft Zukunft” (Reading aloud creates [the] future). In Gütersloh, Bertelsmann donated around 4,500 books worth nearly €60,000 to daycare centers and elementary schools, and Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe donated another 2,000 books to facilities in Munich.
Last Friday, the 13 Bear Group kids sat on a circle of chairs in the autumnally decorated room of the Villa Kunterbunt daycare center in Gütersloh, eagerly waiting for Jana Damps to start reading. The hedgehogs, chestnuts and dried leaves they had made hinted at the story that the Bertelsmann trainee was about to read to the group. Lucy Fleming’s book “Mina und der Trau-dich-Zauber” (Mina and the Magic Spell) is about a little leaf girl who has to leave her branch at the beginning of autumn to move to her winter home. The children listened spellbound to the story – and wanted to another book straight afterwards. And so Read Aloud Day had already achieved its aim: to get children excited about reading (aloud) and help them discover the fun and joy of storybooks in general. Bertelsmann participated in the nationwide Read Aloud Day for the 20th time and donated numerous books in Gütersloh, as did the Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe in Munich. Several hundred colleagues volunteered to read aloud at both locations.
Numerous reading sessions in Gütersloh and Munich
Read Aloud Day, a joint initiative of the national weekly newspaper Die Zeit, Stiftung Lesen, and the Deutsche Bahn Foundation, is Germany’s largest reading festival. This year’s motto was “Vorlesen schafft Zukunft” (Reading aloud creates [the] future). In Gütersloh alone, more than a hundred colleagues from the Corporate Center, Arvato, Bertelsmann BKK, Territory, Mohn Media, the Bertelsmann Stiftung and the Stiftung Deutsche Schlaganfall-Hilfe spent a good hour of their working time at a daycare center or elementary school reading out loud to children. They brought books to life for close to 2,500 children at 30 daycare centers and ten elementary school, with educators or teachers reading aloud at other facilities. Bertelsmann gave some 4,000 daycare children in Gütersloh a book as a gift so that they could continue the reading time at home with their parents and repeat it as often as they liked. In addition, 56 daycare centers and 19 elementary schools in Gütersloh each received a book package with ten books for their own libraries. In total, Bertelsmann donated around 4,500 books worth close to €60,000.
Meanwhile, in Munich, more than 130 Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe employees read to several kindergarten and elementary school classes. The readers came bearing book packages containing titles from the publishers Penguin Junior, Prestel Junior, Der Hörverlag, Cbj, Cbj Audio, Cbt, Gütersloher Verlagshaus, and Tulipan. In this way, the Verlagsgruppe publishers donated around 2,000 books to empower children to continue reading aloud in the future. Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe CEO Christian Jünger also took part in this year’s read-aloud campaign, reading to second-graders at a Munich elementary school. Verlagsgruppe also created a dedicated own Read Aloud Day landing page this year (see below for the link). In addition to tips for reading aloud and book recommendations, it features two reading-aloud videos by children’s book authors Tina Blase (“Die Geisterhelfer” – The Ghost Helpers) and Sven Gerhardt (“Frida und Filu”), as well as a recording of the livestream of Tina Schilp’s reading of her book “Schwapp, der Geheimschleim” (Schwapp, the Secret Slime) last Friday.
