Story book by Tumas Dingli children

Our school, Tumas Dingli Primary School in Attard, has for the last three years been involved in a Socrates-Comenius project entitled "Tales for Children - Friends for Life". Our partner schools are in Germany and Italy.

The aim of this project was to help pupils bridge fantasy with reality. In fact, in the first year, pupils were involved in various projects about magic and fantasy. In the second year the focus was on books children read.

A questionnaire was presented to all the school pupils and their parents. Through this exercise it transpired that Trevor Zahra was the most popular author among Maltese pupils. Pupils also visited Italy and Germany to work with their partner schools.

During this year - the last year of the project - pupils wrote a book of short stories for children. This was a joint venture among the three partner schools. Every story was started by a country, continued by another and finished by the third country. This was done through the Internet.

All three stories in the book are translated into four languages - Maltese, English, Italian and German.

The book, which is being published by Merlin Library, was launched on Tuesday at the school. One of the stories will be acted as a play. An art exhibition by local and foreign artists will also be set up at the school.