Taliparamba: When his classmates picked up books from their newly started 'classrooms library', Muhammed Arfaz, too, took home a Malayalam romance novel. The next day, he returned the book. That was fast, thought Nisa TP, an avid reader and designated 'little librarian' of Class X T.

What Arfaz said did not surprise her. "I just wanted to read but I could not capture anything," Arfaz said, using the English word 'capture' to mean comprehend.

But Nisa would not give up on him. She put a Sherlock Holmes in his hands and advised him to be at it till the end. "It's an easy read," she told him.

Boys are slow readers but they will come around, said Nisa, who just finished reading Yuval Noah Harari's 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind'.

Their class has 21 students and the 'kutty' (small) library has around 100 books. 

A to Z of reading

Seethi Sahib Higher Secondary School in Kannur district's Taliparamba town has set up 'little libraries' in all its 69 classrooms with more than 6,000 books to wean students off mobile phones and draw them into the world of reading. The school trained one student from each class to become the 'little librarian'.

It took the teachers and students nearly five months to roll out the project named 'Chiraku' or Wings.

The school is funded by the government and run by the Taliparamba Juma-ath Palli (mosque) Trust Committee. It was established in 1968 and named after the social reformer and founder leader of the Muslim League, K M Seethi.

Its Class VIII has 26 divisions, that is from A to Z, with 35 students each; Class IX has 22 divisions, with 22 students each; and Class X has 21 divisions, with 45 students each.

Though three more high schools are in the neighbourhood, Seethi Sahib is the largest with students coming from a 15km radius.

"When the children returned to school after two years of Covid, we found them to be restless in class. Their attention span has fallen. Their reading skills have dropped and they are hooked to mobile phones," said the headmaster in-charge Ibrahimkutty UK.

"The worst affected were the students in Class VIII," he said.

The school library, with around 2,000 books, was the least visited room, said Nisar Malayil, a Malayalam teacher and in-charge of the library. "The library was not popular partially because it did not have a full-time librarian. I sat there barely for half an hour. It was a very small window for such a big school," he said.

Government and government-aided schools do not have the provision to appoint a librarian in Kerala. But CBSE schools must have librarians.

The unused library at Seethi Sahib school made teachers think of a plan to take books to students. "We asked students what they would like to read," said Nisar. The genres suggested were 'painkili' novels (cheesy pulp fiction), crime thrillers, detective novels, modern short stories, and science fiction. "We decided to go for them. The idea is to get them to read. Read anything. So we skipped the heavy biographies and classics that may bore kids," he said.

The teachers then approached writer Suresh Kumar of Mathrubhumi Books and Vivek K V of DC Books to help them find the books. "They know the pulse of young readers. We also wanted them to screen the books to ensure the content was age-appropriate," said Jasmine CI, a mathematics teacher.

The two publishing houses gave the school a 35% discount and also gave the books on credit. 

With around 3,000 titles, the teachers organised book fairs in the school on September 25, 26, and 27, the days on which there were PTA meetings. The school suggested that students and parents may buy books and donate to the 'Chiraku' project. "There was no compulsion but the response was overwhelming. Students of Class VIII were the most enthusiastic," said Jasmine. "We realised that parents of Taliparamba wanted their children to read."

When the photographs of students donating books to the school started doing the rounds on social media, the alumni groups started calling. The students of 1973, the third batch of the school, donated books worth Rs 1 lakh. "The alumni sent English books from Delhi. We got them screened by Suresh and Vivek," said Nisar. Other alumni batches bought bookshelves for the 69 classes.

Once the movement gained traction in Taliparamba, the traders and business houses started pitching in. 

The school then brought in Binoy Mathew, a senior librarian of Valapattanam grama panchayat, to train its 69 'little Librarians' how to manage the class libraries.

"He taught us everything about books. Right from how to turn a page, how to take care of books, and how to read," said Naja Fathima of Class IX R. "Reading is an art and also a science."

Mathew also introduced them to Scandinavian libraries, where families go together to read, eat and play. "Their libraries have activity rooms and mentors. And when people get tired, there is room to take a nap. Isn't that lovely!" she said.

Naja Fathima stepped on her reading during the Covid lockdown. "My uncle always nudged me to read," she said about her mother's brother Mohammed K P, who recently set up a dairy farm in Thrissur. Naja's maternal aunt Rehana Banu, who just completed her MSc in Chemistry, published a collection of short stories. "Reading is in our family," she said.

She did not take any books from the classroom library because she is reading 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban' and 'Malgudi Days' picked up from the Officers' Club Reference Library at Sreekandapuram, 8km from her house.

Ayisha Farha of Class VIII C is an eager reader but could not dive into books during the lockdown because her father Aboobacker P K V, a teacher in Dubai, kept her busy with two goats. "My two sisters and brother did not bother to even look at them and I had to take care of them till evening and get them food," she said.

Two became four in the second year of Covid. "It was tiring," said the girl, thoughtlessly looking into her tiny palms.

Thankfully, he sold the goats before returning to Dubai, said Farha. She finished reading Paulo Coelho's Alchemist in Malayalam and picked up 'Kadal Veedu' by Bijesh Uppalakkal from her class library. "It's a story about sea and life," she said.

C V Shewag Babu of Class 10 U said he too was locked down with his grandmother and great-grandmother at their house in Mayil during the pandemic. "At my home, everybody loves and watches cricket. But my grandmother and great-grandmother made me do farming and plant cassava," said the boy named after the swashbuckling cricketer. He has picked up a Malayalam translation of Sherlock Holmes from his classroom library. "I can picturise better while reading in Malayalam."

Dhikra K of Class X K disagrees with Shewag on Malayalam. "I find Malayalam writing overly melodramatic." She has started reading 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'. "I watched the movie some time ago. The book is equally gripping," she said.

Jasmine, the maths teacher who produced a short video to promote reading in the school, said she felt happy when the children were engaged in animated discussion over books. "Our efforts are paying off," she said.

'Develop games & tours around reading to keep it going'

Librarian Binoy Mathew, who also advises local self-government bodies on running libraries, said several government schools had started classroom libraries but over the period, they became just another cupboard in the classroom. That was because the teachers were doubling up as librarians, he said. Recently, the government had distributed books worth Rs 10 crore to schools but they are not being read, he said.

Seethi Sahib school is doing it differently by making the project participatory from the start and giving the responsibility of running the libraries to the students, he said. "If these 69 little librarians become mentors to their classmates, it will have a big impact," said Mathew.

To sustain the interest in the little libraries, the school should encourage students to organise activities around reading, he said.

They can organise 'bookmark' festivals centred around a writer's birthday or her books, organise tours based on the history books students have read, or have a word power game among the benches in the classroom, he said. "Students who can draw can be asked to paint a reading tree on the classroom wall with each branch representing a student and the leaves can be the books they have read," he said.

There can be a 'makers' room', where students can try out things they have read in books. "Libraries can also be the perfect foil for rampant substance abuse among schoolchildren," he said. But to make that happen, Seethi Sahib school should not make the mistake of confining their little libraries to the shelves or between the covers, said Mathew.