Grow Kids get Human Library experience at annual event

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One fun aspect of Grow Kids at the Dawe is the long-running Human Library, which lets kids talk to adults with unique and inspiring stories — be it a rock climber, murderball player, journalist or summer camp director, to name a few.

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Tatiana Tilly, strategic planning and engagement manager, Red Deer Public Library, says there are so many Red Deerians worth knowing, and who can inspire one of the 10-year-olds at this event.

“For many, it’s really hard to think about themselves as a story, but we do have so many stories inside of us, and so many identities. It’s fascinating how people choose what kind of story they would like to present to the outside world, or in this case, to the boys,” says Tilly.

“What happens when the boys attend is that they don’t really know what the human library is, but they leave with lots of great feelings about talking to a real person about real things — real things that may be a really good story for a real book.”

Tilly says the human library is also an opportunity for Grade 5s to open up their minds.

“We know that the Grade 5 audience are not necessarily all great readers, so we strive as a library to provide books in all kinds of formats, and the human library is one of those formats,” she says.

“This portion of Grow Kids allows kids to see different faces, different abilities, and different realizations. It is, for boys, meant to be more inspiring than about breaking stereotypes (for the girls), but I think it is breaking stereotypes in being inspiring because of the diversity of the living book collection.”

The Human Library (humanlibrary.org) started in 2000 in Denmark and is a concept that has become popular worldwide.

Participating students also got to go swimming and experience kickboxing, among other things.

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