The Booktime Campaign

When I heard from Booktrust recently, sharing news with me about their Booktime campaign, I knew that it was something that I wanted to get behind and share with you…

booktime‘Now in its eighth year, Booktime aims to inspire a lifelong love of reading and this year marks a very special milestone for the charity initiative with its 10 millionth book being gifted to a child.

During this school term and next, Booktime will give two free books to 765,000 reception-aged children in England and Wales. This year’s books for children in England are Charlie and Lola’s But Excuse Me That is My Book, published by Puffin, and Tom’s Mad Mop, from the Bug Club series by Pearson UK, part of Pearson’s education business.

Four to five-year-olds in Wales will receive Charlie and Lola’s But Excuse Me That is My Book as well as a Welsh language title. In addition, every primary school and library can also access free guidance and activity sheets on the Booktime website www.booktime.org.uk, with extra resources for libraries and parents also available.

It is widely recognised that one of the most important things a parent can do to help their children learn is to read with them and inspire a love of reading and books. But, recent research has revealed that up to one third of children are not read bedtime stories, and only 13% of parents read to their children every night.’

Only 13%? Makes me sad. I wouldn’t swap bedtime story time with my children for anything. I know that one of the most important things that I can do for Boo and Little Man is read with them and encourage a love of books, but I’ve not made this decision based just on what I should be doing for them – it’s largely based on what I want to be doing with them. I want to see their little faces light up at every page turned, explore the pictures together, be whisked off into a whole new world, and delight in the tales we weave. At just turned 4, Boo is now breaking down words when we read, attempting to decipher the letters and sounds as she wants to discover books for herself and learn to read. It’s an exciting journey that we’re embarking on, and one that will see me ‘feed’ her with stacks more books 🙂

Here, actress Sally Lindsay will tell you more about Booktrust….

There will also be a Read For My School national reading competition running next term, where children will be encouraged to read as many books as they can, and then submit a written piece about the power of reading.

Regular blog readers will know how passionately I feel about reading with my family, so I will bring you news of literacy drives and reading campaigns here, whenever I hear about them. Got to do what we can to help.

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3 thoughts on “The Booktime Campaign”

  1. What a worthwhile campaign. I’ve loved books from a young age and grown up with them all around me – my biggest treat when Tibbons naps is to dive into a good book, pure escapism. I hope that I’ll be able to ignite a passion for reading in him, we have a veritable library of children’s titles, though at the moment he seems more interested in ripping pages than following a story, but we’ll get there I’m sure!

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