Ben Wallenborn, better known to the pupils as "Ben from the globetrotting kids", answered the many questions from the interested children in a friendly and patient manner. He described how the lively stories in his books came about and continue to come about. Together with his wife and three children, he has traveled to many countries around the world. This personal travel experience gave rise to the idea for the children's book series: "B-OB Coddiwomple und die Weltenbummler-Kids". Each book is set in a different country and combines an entertaining adventure story with child-friendly insights into the culture, people and special features of the respective region.
Ben Wallenborn gave the children an impressive account of his work as an author, his many trips with his family and how imaginative stories are created from real experiences.
During the reading from his more recent book "The Mask of the Jaguar - An Adventure in Mexico", the pupils listened spellbound and the pictures, which were shown on a large scale, also helped the young listeners to fully immerse themselves in the story.
The author was also impressed, as all of the fourth-year pupils had already read the Weltenbummler-Kids book "Never wash without soap - An adventure in Germany" as part of the daily reading time at the school. They were almost certainly familiar not only with the characters Line and Benni, but also with the magical mobile home B-OB Coddiwomple. Ben Wallenborn expressly praised this intensive preparation and the children's enthusiasm for reading.
The children's enthusiasm for the Weltenbummler-Kids books was clearly noticeable throughout the event.
The Lindenschule's student body is characterized by great linguistic and cultural diversity: The majority of pupils grow up in families with international biographies. The children are delighted to find their own countries of origin, cultures or similar living environments in the stories of the globetrotter kids. Especially for children whose educational biographies are not always characterized by the same starting conditions, this proximity to the content has a strong motivating effect on reading. In order to make targeted use of this resource, our school has not only purchased the book "Never wash without soap - an adventure in Germany" as a class set, but has also acquired all other books for the Weltenbummler-Kids for loan to the school library.
The school library at the Lindenschule is continuously developed and regularly updated in order to meet the interests, lifeworlds and reading needs of our pupils. The children are consciously involved in the selection process.
Our aim is to provide all pupils, regardless of their origin, language or family background, with low-threshold access to appealing, contemporary children's literature. Of course, we also work in close cooperation with the Gronau public library, which is once again providing us with great support, for example for the upcoming author reading with Lilly Laronge for first and second year pupils in June.
Both author readings and the targeted expansion of our school library are made possible by funds from the Startchancen program.
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