A VILLAGE owes every child a library.

If only there was enough time for the young to read and read more books before going digital.

We are in danger of the next generation’s missing the writing and reading culture.

Shouldn’t we stop and think about this?

And let’s give the young ones all the chances to love reading.

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The story of Elias Pepito is not usual and yet it’s for every child, if the mother does something about it. But not only the mother, also the family and the community.

Picture this five-year-old boy who’d come habitually to a library beginning in the late 1990s. You ask him now that he’s 12 years old why he was in such an “adult” place early in his life and he says it was because his mother couldn’t afford to buy him books but wanted him to keep on reading.

He was probably curious about books, nosy about the few books his mother kept in the house. Now in high school, his world is getting bigger after that first visit to the library years ago
In the Cebu City Public Library, Elias saw fact books and encyclopedias---especially books on animals, he couldn’t let them go!

His mother also started reading aloud to him when he was 7. “Big words, long stories,” he recalls. But he was curious about what she was reading. There was color, there was shape in the sound of his mother’s voice.

The reading lessons a child gets starts with his ears. He then begins to build his own sounds or a vocabulary, yes, he dares. Elias learned what English he has from his reading habit, developing trust in what he can do. “I have a very high imagination,” he smiles, looking happy for having said “high” as he talks about the jungle book, sure of himself, quietly proving how a child’s mind is challenged by what he reads.

I ask him why he loves reading and he says, “Maybe it’s natural.”

And the preferences of the very young begin with nature and science books.

Elias says it was good that a Pinay with a big heart, Aurora Fernandez, sent him some books after having read his story in Sun.Star Cebu in the recent Keep-the-library-open/Close-the-library big issue. No, the city government won’t close the library, thank God; it’s being renovated, says Elias. He says he couldn’t go to read at this time but he has now more books at home, he doesn’t have to re-read the old ones in his own mini-collection before the Cebu City Public Library re-opens.

He has read and re-read the “Adventures of Tom Sawyer” as a faithful Sawyer fan. But his favorite books are still about animals, like the “MEG” novel which he read three times and could read all over again. It’s about the mother of the great white shark, a prehistoric giant weighing all 20 tons. When he reads it again, “it gets chilly,” it’s as though he were in the ocean in an unforgettable swim of his life.

He also reads the books before watching their movie production versions and always finds the books more appealing, such as the science fiction novel, “Jurassic Park,” by Michael Crichton.

Now in high school, he watches out for book sales and prays his mother has enough money to buy more books.

You ask him about the effect of his readings on him. And he sounds like an adult, saying he gets to learn some aspects of life from other people’s experiences.

What if he could vote right now, how would he choose?

He said he’d read a lot about what’s going on, and listen to media---regarding all about these people who want to be elected. “Naa nila ang future sa world,” says this 12-year-old book reader.

What would he want to be when he grows up?

“If the Lord calls me, I will be a pastor,” he says, his grandfather being in the ministry. Sometimes he is even asked by his church to speak to kids in Children’s Sundays.

“Otherwise, I also want to be a doctor,” he smiles again.

(ecuizon@gmail.com)