Dear fellow countrymen,

The working group of the Year of Estonian Book requested me to open the year of the book, and I am very glad to do this. I do this in front of all of you, hoping that the message of the Year of the Estonian Book will reach every Estonian family, every heart.

What is then the message of the year of the book?

I am not going to say it to you in advance. You are going to say it yourself - in a year's time, when the year of the book is over. If a year of the book can ever be over. Today, at this opening moment, in front of the television camera, I would only like to tell you that we are all children of the Estonian book. The Estonian book was born in 1525. Had it not been born, and had it not gained strength by hard work throughout the centuries, we would have been Germans today, or Swedes or Russians, and the world would have been poorer, lacking us. Thus, the year of the book is above all our common birthday. The books is our mother and our father - and this also concerns those few who feel estranged from books or have never even held a book in their hands. A friend of mine once wrote: ''an open book is like a wise father's words to his sons, but also to brothers. An open book is like the protecting knees of a mother, between which a small human being can feel just as strong, courageous and happy as the mother holding him. This is an overwhelming and warm feeling of confidence.''

Why are books so powerful and so dear to us? I suppose it is so as books always have two authors: the writer of whom the book is born, and the reader, who is, via the book, giving birth to his own world, his own landscapes, his own characters, to whom he extends his love or whom he rejects. Thus, a book will only be complete within the reader, as it is also the fruit of his imagination. This mysterious ability to imagine, to be curious, to pose questions to the book and hear the answers, or to put it briefly - to have a dialogue with the book - is not born out of nothing. It must be taught and learned. I will use the opening of the year of the book to ask the parents of our children: find ten minutes every night to read to your child from the favourite book of your childhood, read in your own voice something you used to like in the past. Do not listen to the false prophets who think that the fairy tales of your childhood are no longer in fashion. The distinction between good and evil is not a matter of fashion. I would certainly be happy and grateful to you all, if the year of the book could aggravate the need for books and reading above all in our children, who are will have to celebrate the 500 years of Estonian book in the future.

And I think I need not say that despite all the festive speeches, this year of the book finds us in a situation where we have to protect our books from and against the attractions of consumer society. And we will succeed. We have defended the Estonian book from the imperial and Soviet russification attempts. We have understood that a small nation can only be great and free through its creativity. Between the two World Wars, we had the greatest number of translations published in Europe. During the years of occupation, 30 million books were destroyed in Estonia, but even then, especially then, the Estonian book was a living link between individuals and different eras. Our books today are a sanctuary for those who have lived, or suffered, or died so that their names must live in history.

The coming of the year of the book has been like the coming of spring. At first, there are some signs only, then starlings and larks appear in the countryside, seabirds can be seen at sea, and then the swallow arrives. The spring does not care about the calendar or confused time zones, it will just begin at some hour, and make us say and decide: the spring has begun.

And I hereby declare: the Year of the Estonian Book has now begun. This concerns all of us together and everyone individually. The sole meaning of the Estonian Book is the greater good of the Estonian people and the Estonian state. So I wish that everybody would assume some task, even if it were a small one, it should be one that is within your powers. Awake in your child the need to read books, and keep this flame burning bright also in yourself. Every man is a book, but some books can also be nations! Let us be a nation of open books!

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