This school has no library and will not have one, because there is no room for a fifth room and the four we have are full of children.
What it has instead is the reading corner: the eastern end of the hall, with shelves along two walls, a mat, four low chairs, a fan and nine hundred books, about two hundred of them in Dhivehi.
It is open through the whole school day and until four in the afternoon, and any child may be in it at any time they are not in a lesson. There is no librarian, no ticket and no system beyond a card in a box, which works because there are ninety four children and everybody knows whose book is whose.
The corner was built by parents over three weekends, and the shelves, the mat, the chairs and the fan were all given rather than bought. The books come from the parents' association, from families whose children have grown out of them, and from a box that arrives from a school in Male twice a year.
What the corner needs is always the same thing: books in Dhivehi for children of nine to twelve. There are very few and they are expensive. Anybody who knows where to get them should tell the principal at the gate.
Children take books home every night. Nothing is ever charged for a lost or ruined book and about fifteen go missing a year, which is a price we pay gladly.