• 2025-01-17

The Taiwan Reading Festival Carnival was held amid merriment at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall from December 7 to 8, 2024. The up and coming Taiko drummers from Hsinchu City Fuli Junior High School stunned the entire audience with their performance of "Reading the Future," which kicked off the prelude to the event. Administrative Deputy Minister Teng-Chiao Lin of the Ministry of Education, National Central Library Director Han-Ching Wang and guests from co-organizers jointly pieced together the knowledge tree to light up the light of reading.

Administrative Deputy Minister Lin said, “The theme of the 2024 Reading Festival, Reading is Beautiful．Creating the Future Together; we hope that, through this activity, everyone can feel the innovative energy and infinite possibilities that reading brings. Nowadays, textbook-style reading is no longer the norm, and "reading literacy" is an important development goal of the 108th curriculum. "Literacy orientation" has become an extremely important change in the main axis of education, and the ability to read is the key to the cultivation of basic abilities and can also be used as a skill that you can carry with you.

In recent years, the Ministry of Education has vigorously promoted reading for infants and young children in public libraries, diversified reading promotion programs, subsidies for primary and secondary school book purchases, continuous improvement of reading promotion teacher programs, construction of public libraries and enrichment of library hardware and software equipment, energetically advocating the importance of reading. According to the results of the National Central Library's annual collection and analysis of reading promotion by public libraries in counties and cities, the data for 2023 showed that middle-aged people aged 35-44 are the main reading group in libraries, and the borrowing rate of schoolchildren aged 6-11 is second only to that of middle-aged people. It grew by 4.22 percent compared to the previous year, and the borrowing rate of readers aged 0-5 has also been on the rise (up 2.44 percent), which shows that the importance of early reading literacy has become a consensus among everyone.

The 2024 "Happy Reading Carnival" event is innovative and diverse. The National Library of Korea’s National Children and Youth Library, the National Library of Thailand, and the National Library of the Philippines set up activity booths to share reading activities of foreign libraries with the public. One hundred and thirty institutions, including 11 Taiwan-based organizations and the Library Association of the Republic of China, public and school libraries, museums, publishing houses, bookstores, and reading groups jointly set up more than 200 reading booths to showcase the results of the library and school reading promotion programs. Demonstrating the results of library and school reading promotion solutions to share with the public, the content covered the spirit of the new curriculum, STREAM areas, language learning, international culture, picture book stories and early literacy, etc. Publishers also brought high-quality books for the public to buy, hoping to bring the public diverse and novel reading experiences.

After the launch ceremony, Administrative Deputy Minister Lin of the Ministry of Education and distinguished guests from all walks of life at home and abroad presented certificates of appreciation to the library community, organizations stationed in Taiwan, international librarians, government departments and museums, schools at all levels, publishing houses, co-organizing non-governmental organizations and foundations, expressing their gratitude to partners in various fields across the country who promote reading. Administrative Deputy Minister Lin then went to the "Happy Story Village" as a mysterious guest and told the stories of "Lost" (Faith in Friendship) and "The Cat Who Became a Librarian" (Appropriately International) to the children present, and the scene was filled with laughter.