Link to the Team Read Graphics

In 2008 World Book Day took place in the UK and Ireland on 6 March 2008 and featured:

• Children's campaign
• Spread the Word
• Quick Reads

Children's campaign

Primary schools were sent packs from the middle of January containing a range of toolkits, activity sheets and the very popular World Book Day £1 tokens. These could be used to purchase one of the nine World Book Day children's titles or used as money off against any other book.

This year children got the chance to see what it is like to be an author. A Short Story competition gave schools the chance to submit up to two short stories and illustrations. The 12 winning entries were published in a book launched on World Book Day.

In 2008 libraries were put at the heart of World Book Day. The promotional materials carried a strapline reminding people that reading is free at their local library.

Follow the links to see how we are supporting the World Book Day Spread the Word and Quick Reads initiatives.

TRF is the way that we make important contributions to some important national policy agendas such as Change for Children, which safeguards the wellbeing of children and young people, and Framework for the Future, which develops the skills of librarians.

We are developing TRF in partnership with the Association of Senior Children's and Education Librarians (ASCEL), the CILIP Youth Libraries Group, the Society of Chief Librarians (SCL) and the Arts Council.

Visit the TRF website to take one of our interactive learning packages, join our discussion forum or download practical planning tools and advocacy documents, which help librarians develop skills and plan services. You can also find information on our face-to-face training courses.

Ten years ago we started the Summer Reading Challenge™, as an experiment. The challenge was simple - read six books during the summer. As experiments go, we'd call this one a success.

Because it is our tenth year we are planning to make it bigger and better than before - and that's quite a challenge.

Reflecting the National Year of Reading theme for August and just before the Olympics we are lining up a challenge to really stretch children's imagination to the max - Team Read!

You don't have to be mad about sports to get excited about this year's Summer Reading Challenge - just like a challenge. There are a whole range of sporting incentives and ideas, with bronze, silver and gold levels to to keep children reading. Libraries are going to be getting off the starting blocks too as librarians turn team coach, helping to show children how they can become fast track readers. Some libraries will be running team events where young readers can talk about the books and authors they enjoy. Check with local libraries to find out what's going on.

From 16 June there will be a Team Read website up and running with lots of reading ideas, games, and authors' blogs.

Enjoying Reading

Enjoying Reading is our exciting new partnership project we are running with the Department of Children, Schools and Families. It encourages partnerships between libraries, school libraries and schools and there are extra Summer Reading Challenge resources to support libraries and schools to work together.

Background

Research shows that the Summer Reading Challenge improves children's confidence and sends them back to school fired up and ready to learn. As experiments go, we'd call this one a success. It is now the UK's biggest promotion of children's reading and attracts major partners like the BBC.

Ninety-seven percent of libraries in the UK are involved in the Summer Reading Challenge. We ask all participating libraries to fill out our online evaluation form at the end of each Challenge to help us plan the following year's Summer Reading Challenge.

We also provide interactive online learning packages for librarians running the Summer Reading Challenge on our TRF website.

Eight-year-old James from Solihull has done the Summer Reading Challenge for the last two years with his mum Karen.

"I think the Summer Reading Challenge is good because reading puts lots of good images in my head, and it makes me really want to finish the book I'm reading."

"I'd say to other parents that sharing a book with your child can be a really special time together. The Summer Reading Challenge will help you find books they'll be interested in. And it's all free - it doesn't cost anything to join your local library and take out a book."

Got kids? Get reading!™ is our project for adults who are not confident readers who have children aged seven and under. It sits within our The Vital Link work. We have produced promotional packs for libraries, family centres, schools and others working with parents with low levels of literacy to use to harness their enthusiasm and improve their reading. These are available to order by downloading the order form from Resources.

"For the first time my son has picked up a book and run to me to ask for it to be read." Got kids? Get reading! parent

The Five Minutes promotion supports any work you are doing with families and The Vital Link, our project encouraging adults with low literacy levels to get reading. The reading promotion includes display materials and dedicated booklists for libraries, family centres, children's centres and schools and are available from Resources.

Enjoying Reading is an important new initiative funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families DCSF to help every child love reading. It encourages schools and libraries to work more closely together. It helps schools understand how public libraries and schools library services can help them, and how, together, they can get more children reading more.

As Jim Knight MP, Minister of State for Schools and Learners, said: "Children's enjoyment of reading is critical to their life chances but schools alone can't crack this. The Department for Children, Schools and Families believes more joined up working between schools and libraries can make a big difference and is funding the Enjoying Reading initiative to provide inspiration, ideas and practical support. The National Year of Reading is the perfect time to start to strengthen this alliance."

Enjoying Reading started out as a toolkit we produced in 2004 (which you can still download from Resources). The newly launched Enjoying Reading website shows how schools can make the best of what each part of the library system has to offer. It includes research, case studies, an ideas bank and other resources which all demonstrate how teachers and library staff working together can bring more reading to more children.

There are Enjoying Reading booklets available for primary and secondary schools. And we are also producing new resources to allow more teachers to build on the highly successful Summer Reading Challenge which involves over 650,000 children in libraries every year.

Our partners in Enjoying Reading are:
National Literacy Trust
School Library Association
Society of Chief Librarians
Association of Senior Children's and Education Librarians
Museums Libraries and Archives Council

Other organisations also think that Enjoying Reading is a good thing and are supporting it. These include the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Ofsted, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, United Kingdom Literacy Association and the National Strategies for primary and secondary education.

During which time we have organised training programmes and conferences, carried out research into how libraries are working with Creative Partnerships and commissioned a study by Demos into young people, reading and libraries. You can download the publications and podcasts of our work to date from Resources.

“This project has taught us that exposure to a wide range of books and other resources is really the way to capture the imagination of both teachers and children, which is the surest way to develop their interest in reading.” Jane Choules, Project lead in Bristol Libraries

Orange Chatterbooks encourages children aged between four and twelve to visit libraries with their families, read adventurously and become confident about talking about books.

Every child joining an Orange Chatterbooks group gets a pack containing a reading diary with a special message from Jacqueline Wilson, stickers, pencil, 'post it note' style review notes and a fortune teller game.
You can order Chatterbooks packs from our Shop or by downloading the Chatterbooks packs form available from Resources.

Chatterbooks training days

Inspiring trainer, Jerry Hurst, is leading 2 Orange Chatterbooks training sessions for The Reading Agency:

Thursday 27 November 2008
Marriott Room,
York Central Library,
Museum Street,
York
YO1 7DS

Thursday 4 December 2008
CILIP,
7 Ridgmount Street
London
WC1E 7AE

The training gives essential background for library staff new to Orange Chatterbooks. It is also highly recommended for library staff who want to refresh or top up on previous training in this field.

Participants are guaranteed to come away with practical ideas of how to set up, run and develop a successful and lively Chatterbooks programme for their library service - and to evaluate their Chatterbooks groups' achievements.

Places cost £185 per person and £165 for each subsequent delegate from the same authority

Please complete this Booking form if you wish to book a place.

If you require any further information please contact Jenny Warner on 020 7278 8922 or email training

This course is for library staff, in current Chatterbooks authorities, who are new to running Chatterbooks groups, or who want a refresher course.

If you're planning to start Chatterbooks in your authority, this is also the training you or your staff would need to attend.

The cost will be £185 per delegate (£165 for second and subsequent delegates from the same organisation).

If you require any further information please contact training

So far they have had an interview with Alan Gibbons and Readers’ Question Time event featuring young people and some of their favourite authors broadcast on BBC7. They have also taken part in a collaborative Creative Radio Readers’ Course with the Arvon Foundation.

Our aim is to learn from the Children’s Radio Reading Clubs that we are running at the moment and develop a model that we can use to set up Radio Reading Clubs up and down the country. We also want to support children to produce recordings that can be broadcast on digital and internet-based radios.

A project resource pack that librarians can use to run Radio Clubs will be available on this website shortly.

Booked Up is funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families and is the national programme, which aims to encourage Year 7 children to read for pleasure. At participating schools all children in their first year of secondary school will be given a free book. Children can choose from one of 13 titles specially selected to introduce them to some writers and topics that they might not have come across before.

Last year the programme was launched by the Children's Laureate Michael Rosen - over 637 000 children received a free book and 2 000 public libraries took part.

Libraries and schools sign up at the end of the summer school term and the project begins at the starts of the autumn term.

For details visit the Booked Up website and download the booklist from Resources.

So we've developed a scheme where children's librarians help prisoners to choose a book, to make a recording of themselves reading it and to give it to their children.

The Big Book Share is funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and we are now developing a training programme to strengthen links between libraries and prisons and between prisoners and their families so that prisoners and their families know about libraries and are confident about using them.

Our partners for the current phase of The Big Book Share are Association of Senior Children's and Education Librarians (ASCEL); CILIP Prison Libraries Group; NOMS (National Offender Management Service); the DfES Offenders Learning & Skills Unit; the Writers in Prison Network; HMP Blundeston and Suffolk Libraries; HMP Nottingham and Nottingham City Libraries. We are very pleased to be working with them.

If you are interested in finding out more or want to take part in a training session, please Contact us. You can also order a copy of The Big Book Share 2 Handbook for public librarians and prison librarians who want to develop family reading programmes for prisoners from our Shop.

At the moment we feel the jewel in this particular crown is the Radio Listening Posts. Every library taking part in the Listening Posts programme receives a free digital radio with archives of interviews with authors from BBC Radio 4 and BBC7. They use the legato system for adults and the bug system for children. Guides to these, and Listening Posts in general, are available to download from Resources at BBC Partnership in the Adults section of this website.

Digital radios are also used to listen to Radio 4 book programmes and children's book programmes on BBC7. Increasingly we are adding BBC Radio Network partners and BBC Audio Books to the network.

As part of our BBC partnership we also publish the schedules for programmes broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC7 so that libraries can use these programmes to support the activities of library reading groups. You can download these from Resources at BBC partnership in the Adults section of this website.

The possibilities for this partnership are very exciting. It could be that there is a radio listening post in all public libraries. It could be that library reading groups are able to broadcast on the internet. We are trying out some of these activities with our Children's Radio Reading Clubs.

Our funders for this project are the Arts Council of England and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. It is part of the government's strategy Framework for the Future that aims to modernise public libraries.

Did you also know that just twenty minutes spent reading with your child significantly improves his or her reading? Twenty minutes every day or twenty minutes once or twice a week – it will make a difference.

And we know how important that difference is.

Our work brings us into daily contact with the magical power of libraries’ work with children. Libraries open up the world of reading to children and inspire them to read more and enjoy their reading more.

We’re also very proud of our initiatives like the Summer Reading Challenge and the Big Book Share, which provide ideas to help parents read with their children, helping them discover the world of books – sometimes for the very first time.

And we have projects that encourage schools and libraries to work together, creating the best possible reading experience for children.

In the words of one of our projects – Got kids? Get reading!

“My first reading challenge was four years ago and I have done every Challenge since. It is enjoyable. It improves my reading in school. I have been inspired by the series about Mary-Kate and Ashley also the author Jacqueline Wilson.” Tabassum (12) from Lancashire

*Source: Reading for change, OECD, 2002