The Summer Reading Challenge is here!
The Summer Reading Challenge, presented by The Reading Agency and funded by Arts Council England, encourages children aged 4 to 11 to set themselves a reading challenge to help prevent the summer reading ‘dip’.
Each year the Challenge, delivered through public libraries, motivates over 700,000 children to keep reading to build their skills and confidence. Last year more than 14,000 children across Devon and Torbay took part.
With the disruption caused by COVID-19 and the impact of social distancing on schools and public libraries, the 2020 Challenge will launch as a digital activity to keep children reading over the summer and support parents and carers with children already at home. The Challenge will run from June to September.
This year, Silly Squad, the Summer Reading Challenge 2020, celebrates funny books, happiness and laughter and features bespoke artwork from award-winning children’s author and illustrator Laura Ellen Anderson (Amelia Fang; Evil Emperor Penguin; I Don’t Want Curly Hair). Children taking part in the Challenge will join the Silly Squad, an adventurous team of animals who love to have a laugh and get stuck in to all different kinds of funny books!
The digital Challenge is free to access, featuring games, quizzes and digital and downloadable activities to incentivise and encourage children and their families to take part in reading-related activities at home. Although our library buildings are closed we have boosted the number of children's books available to borrow via our e-lending platforms which can be accessed from our Devon Libraries and Torbay Libraries websites. From July we will also be hosting lots of Silly Squad events and activities on our Facebook pages, so look out for those!
There is a special SCHOOL ZONE on the Silly Squad website with lots of resources to help you to promote the Challenge and we would be very grateful if you could help us by doing the following:
- promote the Challenge to the families in your school, and encourage parents to sign their children up here
- Signpost families to our Facebook pages (https://www.facebook.com/BarnstapleLibrary/ and https://www.facebook.com/Devon.Libraries/ where we will be hosting lots of Silly Squad digital events throughout the summer. More information to follow.