By Damiete Braide
CSS Bookshops Limited recently celebrated World Book Day with pupils of Diamond Private School, TBS, Lagos; Value Added Nursery and Primary School, Tinubu Square, Lagos; and Rizyok Nursery and Primary School, Tinubu Square, Lagos, by giving them books and educating them on the processes of publishing books during the pupils’ courtesy visit to the organisation’s headquarters in Lagos.
At the end of the tour, the pupils were encouraged to imbibe good reading culture and make reading books part of their daily routine.
Mrs. Bosede Adu, Sales Manager, Corporate Affairs and Juliet Okoro, Publishing Editor, with other officials of CSS Bookshops Limited, took the pupils with their teachers on a tour round their facility.
In her address of welcome, Mrs Adu told the pupils that “World Book Day also known as World Book and Copyright Day or the International Day of the Book, is an annual event invented in 1995 by UNESCO in which a book is given to every child to mark the event.
“Also, World Book Day is a wonderful opportunity for CSS Bookshops Limited to showcase the essence and the core values of our trade and it is a good thing that CSS Bookshops has joined in this charity act of honouring young minds and encouraging them to read.”
She enjoined the pupils to uphold the habit of reading in a bid to achieve the ultimate goal in life, while Nigerians and corporate organisations should partake in this yearly event by donating at least a book to every child around them and encourage everybody to read.
Also speaking, Juliet Okoro explained to the pupils the place of publishers in the book industry, which was hitherto unknown to them. She also taught them the processes of books getting to the shelves of bookshops, stressing: authors write; publishers publish; printers print and the bookshops sell the books.
A pupil of Diamond Private School, Segun, said, “CSS Bookshop is beautiful, a great company, and has so many books in the bookshop, while Bimpe from Value Added Nursery and Primary School said books make the world go round and “a reading mind is a learning mind which makes people to adopt good reading habits.”
On why books were given to the pupils as gifts, Managing Director, CSS Bookshops Limited, Oluwadare Oluwatuyi, said, “This is not the first time we are hosting pupils and students on World Book Day. But this year’s celebration was different. It was done to also commemorate our 150th anniversary as a corporate organisation in the business of publishing and bookselling.
“This year, we made the World Book Day a week full of activities. We made concerted efforts by inviting a number of schools and our intention was to have at least one school visiting our bookshop each day from Monday to Friday on a sort of excursion type.”
This year’s World Book Day celebration at CSS Bookshops Limited was part of the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).