Intellectual Ukrainization in action! LuckyBooks got to Donbass and brought the best science-popular books in Ukrainian to children, as well as space lectures.

LuckyBooks came to the boarding school “Smarahdove misto” for settlers from the occupied territories together with the new members of the LuckyBooks’ Experts’ Council – a scientist at the Space Research Institute (by National Space Agency of Ukraine and National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) Tetyana Kovalchuk-Skorokhod, and the libraries reformer and Aristotle's rhetoric trainer Veronica Selega. We brought books for teens, conducted a quiz and organized a ‘star tour’ in an unusual observatory.

LuckyBooks’ books are still in operation, so we brought the best examples of Ukrainian-language popular science literature to the school library. Loving reading, like any other habit, is formed under the influence of the environment. In my opinion, that’s how we should promote science-pop. Imagine: the school generates an interest in the knowledge of science, for example, through the personality of a teacher, then the ordinary public library supports this interest with high-quality modern literature, and moreover, it can offer thematic classes. Given such an integrated approach, it's hard not to get interested, – says Veronica Selega.

Space is much closer than it seems! Tatyana Kovalchuk-Skorohod, who brought a hand-made observatory with her and arranged a “tour of the star sky” for teens, proved this. The children were impressed by the fact that a real scientist who explores the space came to meet them. According to Tatiana, it is best to promote science interactively:

I think that today the children eager not to be “stuffed "with a huge bunch of knowledge, but to be played with and discovering something new while revealing the physics. They don’t want hiding what and how it works and making some kind magic from it. As for the planetarium, I've studied how to make it via NASA Education on YouTube. They created a large polyethylene black pillow, where the children applied constellation drawings, making appropriate holes in them. This gave the idea to put the constellation in advance, and then even combine them with lines made with luminescent paint. So the help of a special UV lantern among the wealth of stars with you can see a general drawing. If there is a desire and an extra 1 500 UAH, then with the detailed instructions one can make the same planetarium in a week or two. 

Now almost four hundred children live in “Smarahdove misto”. Half of them are teens. According to deputy director Volodymyr Romanyuk, one third of the graduates of the boarding school enter higher education, in particular, in the natural sciences. Therefore, popular scientific literature is necessary. The library is basically consisted of old funds, and old books brought by the settlers who left their homes in the occupied territories. Children inquire encyclopedias and modern science pop, especially in Ukrainian language. By the way, this year, one of the graduates – Kristina Becher from Snizhniy - has passed the state exam (ZNO) with 194 points and plans to join the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Well, Svyatogorsk will look forward to meet LuckyBooks again and that time with the first books that will be released within the project.