The Reading Agency

How great to have a National Family Week! We hope it will help shine a spotlight on the magnificent work public libraries do to inspire families to read and learn together.
Miranda McKearney, Director

Website: www.readingagency.org.uk/adults/families

The Reading Agency is an independent charity with a mission to inspire more people to read more. We do a lot of work with libraries and other professionals to help us achieve our mission.

Librarians, teachers, early years workers, family learning tutors and others concerned with education and child development know what a difference reading makes. So to support everyone working with families, we have developed a range of offers to help libraries to engage families in reading.

Our programmes for families include:

• The Summer Reading Challenge - the biggest national promotion of children's reading through libraries. An ideal way to engage families to support their children and expand their reading too.
• Chatterbooks - reading groups for four to 12 year-olds, which offer a great way to involve parents too.
• The Big Book Share - using reading to bring together families separated by imprisonment.
• The Six Book Challenge- helping adults with literacy needs to gain confidence with reading, and being used successfully in a growing number of family settings, as a focus for children and adults to grow their reading together.
• Family Reading Groups - where adults and their children can come together to share and build their reading experiences.
• Training opportunities - we offer a range of training courses which support libraries and their partners in working with families.

"Libraries are just totally different for my children than for when I was a child - you weren't allowed to speak! If you go to our library over the summer, adult customers can barely move for children rushing around looking at books, cutting and sticking and making things. I think that's really good".
Debbie Jarrett, Yaxley library, Cambridgeshire