We heard a pin drop on Friday, March 10, at 10 a.m., in the oval room of the Richelieu library, in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris. The place is crowded, however, filled with students studiously seated at huge work tables, and about fifty children from 7 to 9 years old. In front of them, two men: Colas Gutman and Marc Boutavant, respectively author and illustrator of the series of bestselling novels for children Chien pourri. For fifteen minutes, Colas Gutman read Rotten Dog at school, in front of well-behaved little minds, who didn’t miss a beat. During this time, Marc Boutavant was drawing, on the sheet of a painting, a portrait of the famous lousy canine which is the glory of its two creators.
At the end of the reading, little Estée, a pupil in CM1 at Beauregard elementary school in Paris, marveled: “I have just understood that a story can take us very far! The little girl decided to read on her way home, “a whole book, all at once!” “. Quite a challenge, when you are nine years old… For her, the “Quart d’heure de lecture national”, an event launched by the Center national du livre (CNL) in collaboration with the Ministry of National Education and Youth and in partnership with Le Point, which consists of organizing a reading session every March 10 at 10 a.m., is a winning bet.
The project was inaugurated in 2022, the year in which the reading was made “great national cause” by Emmanuel Macron. This year, it takes place under the sponsorship of rapper and actor Sofiane Zermani (Fianso) and writer Erik Orsenna, member of the French Academy. It first affects, of course, school environments, where reading aloud times are institutionalized in the classrooms. “We are in the process of establishing, in all schools, colleges, general and professional high schools, a quarter of an hour of reading at least once a week, or even two or three times a week in certain establishments, on the impulse of this day”, explains Christophe Kerrero, rector of the academic region of Île-de-France and of the Paris academy, who attended the meeting at the Richelieu library.
The challenge of this quarter of an hour of reading? Feeding minds, of course, improving spelling, deepening literary culture, arousing curiosity, but also easing tensions, offering a break. “Reading is very good for the school climate, because it helps relieve tension. When everyone starts reading, adults and students alike, the atmosphere is more serene,” continues Christophe Kerrero. Aware that “every family does not have a book”, he wishes, with the CNL, to bring the book into the daily life of children, by promoting the creation of libraries in the classes, the borrowing of books at school…
Each child of the Beauregard school left with a book, a gift from the Académie de Paris. “The reading offered really makes them want to, notes Axelle Saccani, teacher with CM1-CM2. The initiative of the CNL and the Ministry of Education complements its own method to arouse the appetite of reluctant children to read: “I start to read a little, then I stop, and they want to finish them themselves. I like to pick them up where they are, to bring them to the book…”
But the “Quarter d’heure de lecture national” is not just for children, even if it is very widely distributed in schools. “It is particularly important to us to remind everyone – children, teenagers, adults, seniors – of the importance of reading and the pleasure we miss when we no longer read, because we let ourselves be carried away by the wave passing time, screens, the chaos of our lives,” says Régine Hatchondo, director of CNL, also present at this reading time.
The event is a call to interrupt the sometimes swirling flow of our days to take the time to dive into a few pages. Thousands of events have been organized throughout France, particularly with companies: Air France, which welcomed Erik Orsenna to its premises for a great reading distributed to its 6,000 employees, Crédit Mutuel (which organized a contest of photos and videos of literary favorites with its employees), but also nursing homes, penitentiary establishments, cafes, bookstores, etc.
“At the rectorate in Paris, all the adults came downstairs to read books to the children. They were very happy about it, many of them thanked me for this quiet space in the day! says Olivia Deroint, Academic Delegate for Arts and Culture. A study from the University of Sussex, among many others, proved in 2019 that reading reduced stress by 68%. However, in France, the practice of reading is losing ground…
The ambition of the CNL and the Ministry of National Education and Youth is to generalize the project, to make it “a meeting as emblematic as the International Women’s Rights Day, the car-free day or the month without tobacco…”, argues Régine Hatchondo. But also to invite each and every one of us to adopt the beneficial habit of regularly releasing the pressure, even for a few minutes, in favor of fiction.
