Cathie (holding the book) is a CCB volunteer and a Granny, and works part time for the University of Exeter training primary teachers. Her invaluable experience makes her the perfect co-ordinator of our Schools Outreach Programme. We chatted to Cathie about her role in this week’s blog:

In a nutshell, what’s your role at CCB?

My role is to lead the schools outreach team. We identify local authors who would like to work with us and take them into schools, providing their books for sale. We also read and review as many of the children’s books published each year as we can, and select 20 to take into schools for our programme around World Book Day. When in school we read extracts from the books to the children, inspiring them to want to read more for themselves and try new authors. We do this for both primary and secondary students, thus we have a top 20 for children aged 4-11 and one for Young Adults.

What do you love about what you do?

Seeing children animated by reading and excited about having a new book.

How do you select the CCB Top 20?

We look at all books published and select those where the plot line looks interesting, or they have been well reviewed, or they are by an author we like or a new local author. Our team of six reads the books and together we decide which are our top best reads for the year. We also have a panel of children who advise us.

What’s your favourite children’s book?

Last year I loved The Explorer’ by Katherine Rundell. It was an old fashioned ‘good yarn’ which caught the attention of children from the very beginning and was full of adventure and surprises. Year 3 right through to Year 6 loved it.

The Explorer | Katherine Rundell

After their plane crashes into the Amazon rainforest, four children must learn to survive. ‘I wanted to write a book in which the children learn that they are braver than they think they are,’ says author Katherine Rundell. ‘I wanted to write about children discovering that the world is more beautiful and more complicated than they had ever imagined.’ – A perfect description of what this book achieves.

Find out more about our Schools Outreach Programme and how we can serve your school on our website, and read more about last year’s World Book Day tour!