Book for Life

On the final day of their last year at primary school, a day of farewells to Year 6 classmates and the teachers who had been part of their lives since the age of five, 66 young people from five schools in the area received a gift from Rotary – of a book that will hopefully serve as a memory of those days now past, but also something that will serve them well as they progress to secondary education.

The schools were Dartmouth Academy with 19 pupils in the year group, Blackawton with 20, Stoke Fleming with 15, St John the Baptist with nine and Kingswear with just three.

Stoke Fleming selected dictionaries for their young people and Blackawton chose a combined dictionary and thesaurus. Dartmouth Academy took all their Year 6 pupils to the Community Bookshop in the town where they each selected a book for themselves. St John the Baptist similarly allowed pupils to make their own choice.

Kingswear decided on a substantial hardcover book entitled “The Book of Hopes: Words and Pictures to Comfort, Inspire and Entertain”,  edited by best-selling novelist Katherine Rundell, which contains 133 contributions in the form of short stories, poems and illustrations from people well-known in the field of children’s literature.

The books were all presented by Club President Trevor Branton, accompanied by Struan Coupar who had organised the 2022 initiative.