A number of groups of children and teens from education institutions of Chisinau will create the robot portrait of a character from universal literature with the assistance of a criminalist. The event forms part of the project “Looking for a character!” that was launched in the Foreign Books Section of the National Children’s Library “Ion Creanga” on December 14. Today the children familiarized themselves with English writer Charles Dickens’s character Oliver Twist, IPN reports.

According to the vice director of the National Children’s Library “Ion Creanga” Eugenia Bejan, the project “Looking for a character!“ is a new method of attracting children to literature, stimulating their interest in particular books.

The project is implemented together with the Forensic and Judicial Expertise Center of the General Police Inspectorate, while the characters are chosen by librarians. “The children also familiarize themselves with the profession of criminalist. I think their perception of the police, whose image is somehow damaged in our society, will change,” stated Eugenia Bejan.

Foreign literature is more popular than the national one. Among the books preferred by teens are the books of John Green, Jeff Kinney and Suzanne Collins. “School readings are valuable, but when a book is read out of pleasure, the effect is much greater and the children are more involved,” said Eugenia Bejan.

The workshops that will be staged each month will involve groups of children from education institutions with which the library cooperates. At the end of the project, there will be mounted an exhibition of robot portraits of characters made by children.