World Vision’s Community Fundraising champion, Delphine Wolfe recalls her favourite childhood book and shares ideas for celebrating World Book Day at home this year.
One of the stories I used to love to read as a child in France, was about a boy who got punished for littering!
He was throwing his sweet wrappers on the floor. When an ancient oak tree challenged him about his actions, the boy simply didn’t care: “What harm can a small plastic wrapper do?” he said. The oak tree got angry – so did I – for the boy’s lack of respect to the environment. So, the tree summoned the wind to gather all the sweet wrappers that children across the world threw negligently on the floor and covered the poor boy from head to toe with the pile of sticky bits of foil and plastic. I remember how satisfied I felt to see the boy’s surprised and disgusted look as he promised to never do this again.
If they did World Book Day costumes back in the 80’s, that would have been a fun outfit to make indeed!
I’m pretty sure this story fuelled my passion to help protect the environment and its people and had an impact on my career choices.