Inspiring a love of books

Children and their families celebrate National Simultaneous Story Time at Altona Meadows. (Pictures: Supplied)

Families across the west made their way to the library on Wednesday, May 25 to mark National Simultaneous Story Time.

The event, which is in its 22nd year, is run annually by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA). Its aim is to gather one million children from around the country and the world to read the same chosen picture book at the same time.

This year’s book was ‘The Family Tree’ by Josh Pyke. The story is told from the perspective of a tree who starts as a seed and narrates its own life-span as it grows alongside the family whose yard it is in.

As some of our littlest Hobsons Bay residents imagined the concept of something so small, growing into something so big, participants were gifted seeds from a locally Indigenous plant ‘Linum marginale’ (commonly known as Native Flax) from council’s conservation team, as well as a native sapling from the urban forest team, to take home and grow in their own gardens.