The B.C. authorities just lately introduced a $500,000 grant to literacy packages throughout the province, together with The Vancouver Solar’s Elevate-a-Reader marketing campaign.
![The province is donating $500,000 to literacy programs, including the Vancouver Sun's Raise-a-Reader campaign. Pictured: Minister of Municipal Affairs Anne Kang reads to Vivianna Yao and her mother, Cindy Liu, at the Burnaby Public Library Summer Read Club Wrap-up event. 0923 rar kang Photo credit: Herman Thind / Government of BC [PNG Merlin Archive]](https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/vancouversun/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/107a0765.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=288&h=216&sig=PqnMzAXWeTDI6ArjKVSwPg)
American writer Dean Koontz has printed over 100 novels. And Anne Kang has all of them.
OK, possibly that’s an exaggeration. However she’s a fan.
“Two issues I gather proper now are V.C. Andrews and Dean Koontz books,” the minister of municipal affairs mentioned. “I’ll choose them up at any time when I see them at used bookstores. I’ve an enormous assortment proper now that I’ve not learn. I’m hoping to twist up in the future on a trip and skim every thing that I’ve purchased.”
Now, as a minister within the B.C. authorities and the mom of two teenage youngsters, she doesn’t have as a lot time to learn for pleasure as she wish to. However she stays a robust advocate of studying and literacy.
“I like books and studying,” she mentioned. “And literacy means a lot extra than simply books. Literacy is a vital talent that opens doorways to extra significant work, group engagement and studying alternatives for everybody.”
The provincial authorities just lately introduced a $500,000 grant to literacy packages throughout the province, together with The Vancouver Solar’s Elevate-a-Reader marketing campaign.
“Literacy means extra than simply books,” Kang mentioned. “It’s a vital talent that opens doorways to significant work, group engagement and studying alternatives.”
Since its inception in 1997, Elevate-a-Reader’s Solar readers have raised $22,223,260.94. Final yr, funds raised by means of Elevate-a-Reader helped carry literacy packages to 66,000 youngsters and their caregivers by means of 10,934 program classes.
Kang says she “grew up in a household that was wealthy with books.”
“My dad is an avid reader. He preferred to learn the information. He’s a church reverend so he reads quite a lot of self-help books and Biblical books to assist the congregation.”
She credit her Grade 1 instructor, Patricia Gudlangson, and the college librarian, Mr. Christie, as individuals who influenced her love for studying.
“I used to be new to Canada in Grade 1, and I didn’t know a phrase of English,” Kang mentioned. “The classroom was very totally different from faculty in Taiwan. It was carpeted. There was a literacy wall. I noticed a calendar and underneath the calendar there have been books, tons and plenty of books full of footage and hues, some with hardcovers. I used to be simply amazed on the selection. That was very totally different from the place I went to highschool.”
Within the faculty library from Grades 1 by means of 7, Mr. Christie entranced her by sharing his favorite books.
“He would inform us why they have been his favourites. And the way in which he spoke, it was as if the books have been essentially the most scrumptious dessert to him. His phrases captured me each single second. And he would learn a chapter or two with numerous character voices.”
She loved thriller collection like Encyclopedia Brown, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys, in addition to Goosebumps and Which Manner Books. In her early teenagers she graduated to Candy Valley Excessive and Judy Blume’s Ramona collection. Then in highschool she “fell in love with sci-fi” and the work of thriller/thriller/suspense author Koontz.
Now of their teenagers, her son and daughter aren’t avid readers like their mother. Kang says they spend most of their free time on-line enjoying video games, though her son, who’s in Grade 9, enjoys books on management, the Second World Warfare and airplanes.
“He desires to be an airplane technician in the future,” Kang mentioned.
Taking a cue from Christie and Gudlangson, Kang has inspired her daughter to learn by arranging “a mini-library of beloved books” in her room.
“The explanation why I gravitated in direction of books was as a result of they have been laid out so superbly, and so they have been calling to me. And in order that’s what I do for my daughter.”
Donations to Postmedia Information’s Elevate-a-Reader marketing campaign will be made at raiseareader.com, 604-681-4199, and by cheque, payable to Vancouver Solar Elevate-a-Reader, 1125 Howe St., No. 980, Vancouver, B.C., V6Z 2K8. Discover us on Fb @RaiseaReaderVan and on Twitter/X @RARVancouver #RARVan.
