Your childhood story was beautiful. The way you described the precious treatment of books made me yearn for an era gone by.

Thank you for the opportunity to now share a snippet of my schoolbook practices.

Growing up in the 1980s in a small sea-side town of Turners Beach, Tasmania (Australia) meant that entertainment was inclined to revolve around nature exploration and schoolbook education. My little primary school was a thirty minute bus trip away from home. It was there that the practices of schoolbooks taught me to highly respect each book as though it was worth the weight of gold. The vivid memories of English books and their series of colours signified that with each passing level I could have a purple book, a pink book, a blue book and a yellow book. I eagerly devoured each page and wrote down my answers on separate pieces of paper with all the energy and self-motivation of a learner who could not wait to start on the next book.
Books were expensive in the 1980s. The Australian Government decided to place a tax on every book that was bought. My Mother was devastated. The school continued to pursue the buying of books, the sharing of them and the utmost caring of them. However, this meant that books became a rare commodity to behold and to make the most of every single page and word contained within them.
Utilizing the primary school library was imperative and all my teachers not only encouraged the use of the library, but they also instilled a rule that after each lunch break we had to choose a book carefully and thoughtfully, then read it for twenty minutes Silent Time. During this Silent Time we soaked in the pages and the books became enmeshed into our lives.

We were all given an opportunity to share our feelings about the books we read with our class members. The funniest book was the iconic Australian one named The Magic Pudding. I tried not to giggle while reading it as the images it drew in my mind of a pudding that never stopped growing was my childhood delight.

School instilled the practice of mindfulness surrounding all books. A mindfulness that we all needed books. They were our only answers.

Thank you for such an inspiring story about schoolbooks. It reminds me of cheerful experiences when I received my own schoolbook for the first time in primary school. In my family, schoolbooks would be passed down from senior relatives to junior ones to save money due to the poverty of my family at that time. In my year 4, people made a great renovation regarding schoolbooks; therefore, all of the students are required to purchase brand new books for their semester. I was the first person in my family possessed the books of the new generation. The first thing I did with my news books was to compare them with the old ones, which gave me a general outlook about the changes to books. Anyways, I always attempted to preserve them with my heart and soul because I thought that those books would be used by my juniors. Sometimes, I did leave them some useful notes that my teachers told me in class. I hoped those notes will help my juniors catch up with the lessons in a better way.