When books spark wonder

By Noel Galon de Leon

Yesterday was one of those days that reminded me why books matter. After the launch of TukiBása: The UP Visayas Language Program Reading Corner, I had the opportunity to see, up close and in person, the unmistakable excitement on the faces of my students from the UP High School in Iloilo. I watched them look at the books displayed before them with a kind of wonder that is difficult to describe unless one has witnessed it firsthand. There were classic children’s books, contemporary picture books, young adult novels, books in different languages, and stories that offered worlds far beyond the immediate realities of their classrooms and homes. For some students, however, this was not simply an enjoyable encounter with books. It was an encounter with something they rarely have access to. Their excitement was therefore both beautiful and heartbreaking. It made me realize once again that what some children consider an ordinary object, a book sitting on a shelf, can be an extraordinary privilege for others.

I almost wanted to cry yesterday because several of my students told me that they do not have children’s books at home. Some said that they rarely get the opportunity to hold or read a children’s book, not because they do not want to read, but because books are expensive and are not necessarily considered a priority in their households. I cannot blame their parents for this. Families have different economic realities, and when parents are forced to choose between food, transportation, tuition, electricity, medicine, and other necessities, buying a beautifully illustrated children’s book can understandably fall far down the list of priorities. The problem, therefore, is not simply that children are not reading. The deeper problem is that many children are growing up in environments where access to books is structurally limited. We should be careful when we tell children to “read more” without asking a more uncomfortable question: What books are actually available to them?

This is where the conversation about the reading crisis in the Philippines becomes more complicated. We often discuss declining reading habits as if they were simply a matter of discipline, attention span, or the supposed deterioration of young people’s interest in literature. We blame phones, social media, video games, short-form videos, and the internet. Certainly, digital distractions have transformed how young people consume information and entertainment. But blaming technology alone is an easy explanation for a problem that is much more deeply rooted in inequality and access. A child who has hundreds of books available at home, regularly visits bookstores and libraries, receives books as gifts, and grows up surrounded by adults who read is experiencing a completely different literary environment from that of a child who may encounter books only inside a classroom or school library. We cannot demand the same reading habits from children whose access to literature is radically unequal.

There is another question that we must confront: Whose literature are we making available to children? Access is not only about the number of books on a shelf. It is also about the relevance, diversity, quality, language, and cultural representation of those books. Children need stories that allow them to see themselves, but they also need stories that allow them to encounter lives different from their own. A library filled with important books should therefore contain classics and contemporary works, local and international literature, Filipino and regional literature, fiction and nonfiction, picture books and young adult novels, books about history and culture, books in Philippine languages, and literature that speaks to different experiences and identities. A child should not have to leave their community before encountering a story that reflects their own world. Literature should not make children feel that their language, culture, family, or community exists outside the boundaries of what is considered worthy of a book.

For this reason, school libraries are not merely supplementary facilities. They are cultural institutions. A library can become one of the most democratic spaces inside a school because it can provide access to resources that students cannot necessarily afford to own themselves. The presence of a good library can partially compensate for inequalities in household access to books. It can give a child the chance to discover a writer, language, character, idea, or world that might otherwise remain inaccessible. This is why investment in school libraries should never be treated as an optional expense or a decorative component of educational infrastructure. A school can have impressive buildings, sophisticated laboratories, modern classrooms, and advanced technology, but if its library is neglected, its educational ecosystem remains incomplete.

This also places a profound responsibility on librarians. Librarians are not simply custodians of books. They are mediators of knowledge, culture, and imagination. They help determine which books become visible to students and which remain invisible. Their work involves more than cataloging, shelving, and maintaining collections. They need to understand the changing interests of young readers, emerging literary movements, new children’s and young adult literature, regional publishing, multilingual resources, and the cultural realities of the communities they serve. A living library requires active curation. It requires librarians who are willing to ask what students are reading, what they want to read, what they cannot find, and what stories they have never been given the opportunity to encounter.

School administrators share this responsibility. They make decisions about budgets, infrastructure, programs, partnerships, and institutional priorities. If administrators genuinely want to strengthen literacy, then the library must be part of the school’s long-term educational strategy. Buying new books cannot be treated as an occasional project that happens only when there is a donation or a special event. Collections need to be continuously renewed. Books wear out, information changes, children’s interests evolve, and new literature emerges. A library that has not acquired new titles for years may technically remain a library, but it risks becoming a museum of outdated reading choices. The goal should not simply be to have books. The goal should be to create a living collection that students actually want to enter, browse, borrow, read, discuss, and return to.

We also need to stop measuring the success of a library solely by the number of books it possesses. A collection of thousands of books means very little if students do not know they exist, cannot access them easily, do not see themselves represented in them, or feel that the library is not a space for them. Reading culture is built through relationships. Teachers recommend books. Librarians introduce unexpected titles. Parents talk about stories. Students exchange recommendations. Writers visit schools. Publishers collaborate with educators. Communities organize reading programs. Book clubs create spaces for discussion. Reading corners make books physically visible. Storytelling makes literature social. A successful library is not silent merely because people are quiet inside it. It is alive because ideas are moving through it.

Teachers also have an important role in rebuilding this culture. We should not reduce reading to comprehension tests, worksheets, required chapters, and examinations. When every book becomes another assignment, reading can easily become associated with obligation rather than pleasure, discovery, and intellectual freedom. Children need opportunities to read simply because a story fascinates them. They need time to browse without immediately being asked to produce an academic output. They need to recommend books to one another, talk about characters, disagree about endings, laugh at illustrations, become emotionally attached to fictional worlds, and encounter ideas that challenge their assumptions. Reading is an educational practice, but it is also an imaginative and social experience. We should protect that dimension.

Communities outside schools can also participate in this work. Community libraries, barangay reading centers, independent bookstores, publishers, writers’ organizations, cultural institutions, universities, local governments, and civic groups can contribute to creating a broader reading ecosystem. A child should encounter books not only during library period but also in community spaces, public programs, cultural centers, cafés, book fairs, reading corners, and local literary events. If we want a reading culture, we have to make reading visible. Children need to see adults reading. They need to see books being discussed, exchanged, recommended, celebrated, and treated as valuable objects. A society cannot tell children that books matter while simultaneously making books difficult to find, difficult to afford, and culturally invisible.

There is also an urgent need to support literature produced in Philippine languages. For children in multilingual communities, reading should not be confined to English or Filipino. Hiligaynon, Kinaray-a, Aklanon, and other Philippine languages carry histories, memories, humor, knowledge, and ways of seeing the world that cannot simply be replaced by translations into dominant languages. When children encounter literature in the languages spoken by their families and communities, they are not merely learning to read. They are learning that their own linguistic worlds are worthy of literary representation. This is particularly important in Western Visayas, where regional languages continue to shape everyday life and cultural identity. Building libraries therefore also means building collections that recognize the linguistic diversity of the communities they serve.

We should also recognize that the children’s publishing industry itself faces challenges. Producing a good children’s book requires writers, illustrators, editors, designers, translators, printers, publishers, and distributors. These books are often more expensive to produce because of their visual and material requirements. A picture book cannot be produced at the same cost as a simple text-only publication. Yet these books are precisely what many young readers need. If we want children to have access to quality literature, we need stronger support for publishers, writers, illustrators, translators, libraries, and literacy programs. The reading crisis cannot be solved by telling children to read more while leaving the entire literary ecosystem underfunded.

Perhaps the most painful realization from yesterday was that the students’ amazement was not only about the stories inside the books. They were amazed that so many books could exist in one place and that those books were available for them to explore. That reaction should make us uncomfortable. A child should not be astonished simply because there is a shelf filled with books. Access to literature should be ordinary. It should be expected. It should be part of growing up. Children should not have to be exceptionally privileged to experience the joy of discovering a book that speaks directly to them. If a child is surprised by the existence of a rich library, perhaps the question we should ask is not why the child is surprised, but why such access has been made extraordinary in the first place.

This is why initiatives such as TukiBása matter. A reading corner may appear small compared with the enormous problems facing Philippine education, but cultural change often begins with small spaces where people can experience something differently. A reading corner can become a doorway. One book can lead to another. One story can lead to a question. One question can lead to research. One character can inspire empathy. One poem can give a child language for an emotion they could not previously express. One local story can make a child recognize the value of their own community. We should never underestimate what can happen when a child encounters the right book at the right moment.

I remain hopeful for my students. I refuse to believe that they are uninterested in books simply because they live in a world saturated with digital media. Yesterday showed me something different. When given the opportunity, they were curious. They were excited. They touched the books, looked through the pages, examined the covers, asked questions, and responded with genuine wonder. Perhaps young people do not need endless lectures about why they should read. Perhaps they need adults to take access seriously. Perhaps they need better books, better libraries, better spaces, more time, and adults who believe that their intellectual and imaginative lives are worth investing in.

Whenever I am given an opportunity to share my own collection with the public, I immediately take it. I do this because I believe books should circulate. A book sitting unread on my shelf can only reach one person, but a book placed in a library can potentially reach dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of readers over time. I do not pretend that donating books or building reading corners will solve the country’s reading crisis by itself. The problem is too large and too structural for that. But we have to begin somewhere. For me, this is one of the things I know how to do. I can share books. I can introduce literature. I can connect writers and readers. I can help create spaces where children can encounter stories. I can advocate for libraries and regional literature. These may seem like small acts, but they are the acts available to me, and I believe they are worth doing.

The reading crisis is ultimately not only a crisis of reading. It is a crisis of access, imagination, cultural investment, and educational priorities. It asks us what kind of society we want to build and what kinds of futures we are willing to make possible for our children. If we continue to tell young people that they should read while failing to provide them with meaningful access to books, then we are placing the responsibility for a systemic failure on the children themselves. That is neither fair nor intellectually honest. The responsibility belongs to all of us: teachers, librarians, administrators, parents, publishers, writers, government agencies, cultural institutions, communities, and readers.

Yesterday, I saw the faces of my students light up because of books. I saw wonder, curiosity, excitement, and possibility. I also saw a painful reminder of how unequal access to literature remains. Those two realities existed in the same moment. The joy was real, but so was the inequality behind it. And perhaps that is precisely why we must continue creating libraries, reading corners, book programs, publishing initiatives, and community spaces where books can reach children who might otherwise never encounter them. We cannot wait for the perfect system before we begin. We have to build the reading culture we want, one classroom, one library, one community, and sometimes one child at a time.

For my students, I hope yesterday was more than a launch. I hope it was an invitation. An invitation to open a book, to linger over a page, to discover a character, to encounter a language, to question an idea, and perhaps eventually to find themselves as readers. Because when a child discovers the wonder of books, we are not simply giving that child something to read. We are giving them access to worlds, voices, histories, possibilities, and ways of imagining a future that may be larger than the one immediately visible to them. That is why books matter. That is why libraries matter. And that is why we must continue fighting to make both accessible to every child.

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Noel Galon de Leon is a writer and educator at the University of the Philippines Visayas. He teaches in the Division of Professional Education and at UP High School in Iloilo. He currently serves as faculty-in-charge of the UP Visayas Language Program Office and as secretary of the National Committee on Literary Arts of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). His poetry has been recognized by the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.