HK Biggest Bilingual Children Bookstore @Olympian City Branch Opening Party & Storytelling (22/10/2011)
| Venue | ： | Olympian City Branch, The Commercial Press Shop115, 1/F, Olympian City 1, 11 Hoi Fai Road, West Kowloon, Kln. |
| Speaker | ： | Mrs. Jan Mann |
| Organiser | ： | Blooming Club |
Review
We had a wonderful celebration of our 2nd Anniversary and Opening Party at the new Olympian home base on 22 Oct 2011 with overwhelming support from over a hundred Club members and friends from the book industry. Mr. Steve Luk, managing director of The Commercial Press (H.K.) Ltd who has had the vision to develop Blooming Club into what it is today gave a welcoming speech and shared his ideas behind the project with our guests.
How Blooming Club started
Established two years ago by The Commercial Press (H.K.) Ltd and its subsidiary, Bloomsbury Books Ltd with the principal objective of helping children discover the pleasure of reading in English, Blooming Club's focus remains on English books because so many children in Hong Kong find reading in English a huge challenge.
What Blooming Club has done
In order to make reading more fun, we have set up a website where we provide up-to-date information on English books for parents and children. We then opened a Blooming Club children's corner at our Causeway Bay branch where we not only offer a wider selection of books for children of all ages from baby to young adult, but also started to organize regular events such as storytellings and book launches for families to enjoy together. In addition, we offered reading related workshops for teachers and parents to learn how to turn children in book lovers. In June last year, we opened Blooming Club corners in our flagship stores in TST.
Over the past two years, with the massive support we have received from publishers, authors, storytellers, parents, teachers, children and our honorary advisors, we have organized more than 50 events in both venues on either side of the Harbour which were all free of charge. The events have attracted attendance figures of about 3,000 people and a significant rise in sales of our increasingly popular range of titles!
Apart from serving our customers at home through our website and in our shops, we also serve schools by providing them with recommended reading lists, organizing book fairs, advising staff and supplying books to school libraries.
New development
As demand increases, so there became a need for more space dedicated to children's books. As a result, we decided to transform our Olympian City branch into a new Concept Store specializing in children's books – both Chinese and English covering all age groups from baby to young adult. Not only that, at this shop we can, as you will see, offer a wide variety of educational toys which complement the books and aid learning through play. In addition, we have bestsellers and leisure reading books for parents/adults, offering a one-stop shopping destination for the whole family.
We are very proud to have a new home base for Blooming Club from where we can better serve our customers and schools with a wider range of books and toys, making it truly a one-stop shopping destination for all the family.
Celebration Time
Dr. Luk was later joined by Blooming Club's honorary advisors and storytellers at the cake-cutting ceremony much to the amusement of the well-behaved young Club members who had patiently listened to the speeches. Apparently, they didn't expect to eat cake in a book store!
However, what delighted them most was neither the cake nor the other refreshments, but the long awaited Story Time.
Calvin Can't Fly storytelling by Jan Mann
Jan Mann, Blooming Club's honorary advisor, engaged the crowd with her usual lively delivery of Calvin Can't Fly, a story about a starling (a bird) who was bookworm. The story was particularly appropriate for the occasion as we celebrated our anniversary.
Calvin who had buried his head in books all his life, turned out to be the saviour of the day during the Migration when the family of starlings encountered a hurricane. The knowledge he had gained from reading his books proved that reading for fun also helped equip him to cope with the difficulties that befell him and his flock in this frightening situation.
Judging from the happy faces in the audience, we are quite sure that many were indeed inspired by Calvin to read more.
Once again, we thank all our friends and members for being there to help us celebrate on our special day.
