This years Wild World Heroes Summer Reading Challenge has come to an end in this special Blog Post we have a round up of how it all went. Read on to find out more
The annual reading challenge has been running in libraries across the UK for a number of years. The aim is to encourage children to keep reading across the summer holidays to avoid a dip in reading ability and focuses solely on reading for pleasure. Over the past 18 months Covid has of course affected everything and in 2020 the reading challenge went online. So as libraries reopened this year we were determined to bring back challenge 2021 with a bang!
Lots Of Activities
The Wild World Heroes theme allowed our staff to use their always excellent creative skills to bring jungles, rainforests and savannahs to East Lothian –special mention to Musselburgh for the added sound effects!
Alongside the challenge to read 6 books across the holidays activities such as rock pooling, eco growing, bear hunts and nature walks were offered as free activities. In Dunbar local artist 'Amy' held a workshop where children created sea houses on driftwood. The results were beautiful.
An East Lothian wide photography competition encouraged children to record nature close to home and the winners will be announced in the next week. Our new Community School Librarian, Mark at Prestonpans Library offered a full programme with weekly activities, an additional needs Lego Club and a Book Group who were visited by the fab author Alan McClure.
Each child completing the challenge was given a book to keep and we hope they’re all enjoying their prizes.
Summer Reading on Tour
Of course the reading challenge works well for those families coming into libraries but this year we also took the challenge on tour! Receiving funding from the Get Into Summer initiative we worked to bring the challenge to holiday clubs, museums, football camps and play pop-ups across East Lothian.
The funding allowed us to take a selection of books to activities for children to choose and keep. They could then use this as the first book in their challenge before joining the library to continue if they wished to. A total of 407 children had the chance to choose at least one book and have a positive conversation around reading. 39 Children attending the holiday clubs at Prestonpans and Port Seton Community Centres were supported by libraries staff to complete the reading challenge in full receiving their certificates and prizes at the end of the summer. An extra special mention to staff at Prestongrange Museum who engaged over 80 children in conversations about reading during their visits and to Museums colleagues for theming their own summer challenges to match ours.
Storytellers Macastory had us singing, dancing and laughing at Wallyford Community Centre and Prestongrange Museum. We popped up in East Linton, Gullane, Tranent, East Saltoun, Wallyford, Whitecraig and Aberlady as well as all the main East Lothian towns, working with colleagues from Connected Communities, Sports Development, and the fantastic East Lothian Play Association.
A Big Thank You
Thank you to everyone who worked with us to make this a summer to remember.
A big thank you to all the parents, grandparents and carers who encouraged and supported the kids to take part.
Finally - a special thanks to all of our amazing East Lothian kids who took time this summer to take part and read their six books!
Watch out for us popping up again next year, we can’t wait!
