World Book Day in nearly upon us and the schools team at The Bookery have been busy prepping and planning a fortnight of school visits with our new selection of Top Titles. Demand was so high this year the fortnight filled in 24 hours, and we have a waiting list! We can’t wait to get out there again and inspire young readers with the love of books.

‘These events you do are always a great opportunity to get the children excited about books’

Each year our schools team select from the books published in the previous year to compile a list of some of the best books for children aged 4-12. Book choices are often outside the usual promotions and our criteria are ‘a good read’ along with ensuring diversity of characters, authors, settings and story line.

This set of books is selected to provide a robust range for all ages and abilities of primary school pupils and has become a highly valued resource for the schools we work with as core library stock, as a guide for introducing readers to new titles in the bookshop and forms the basis of our World Book Day offer.

‘Children enjoyed hearing about new authors and were inspired to try new books.’

Whilst we could not go into schools last year our schools still wanted our WBD event so on March 4th 2021 we held a virtual WBD, with seventeen schools, 3,000 children, joining in. To ensure that those learning from home were able to take part (about two thirds of children) we pre-recorded videos for the three different age groups, which were sent by schools to parents for viewing on March 4th. Our story was picked up by BBC Spotlight where we made the 6 o’clock news!

‘Thank you so much, the children in school and those at home all loved the zoom/videos!’

In 2021 we…

• sold over 7,500 children’s books
• reached over 4,000 school children with online events
• visited 900 school children with in-person events
• gifted 1550 books to children identified as most in need