We’ve teamed up with low-cost airline easyJet to bring families top tips and creative ideas to help encourage children to practice their reading, writing, drawing and communication skills over the summer holidays.
The low-cost airline is creating Flybraries (flying libraries!) on 296 aircrafts this summer, putting 17,500 children’s books into passenger seat pockets to help encourage thousands of children to read on their flight – and beyond.
easyJet kicked off the campaign by launching new research which found that over a fifth (22%) of parents said their child has not visited a public library in over a year, and three-quarters of parents (75%) were worried that their children’s vocabulary might be negatively affected by reading fewer books.
This was coupled with our own research, which found that three-quarters of a million (770,129) school children don’t own a book of their own. That’s one child in 11 (9.4%) in the UK, rising to one child in eight (13.1%) from disadvantaged backgrounds.
“Books have the power to transform children’s lives, which is why it is so alarming that more than three-quarters of a million children in the UK don’t have a single book of their own, and one in five haven’t been to a library in the past year. Getting books into the hands of children, and helping them discover a love of reading, can set them on the path to a more successful future. easyJet’s Flybrary initiative is a fantastic way of getting thousands of children into reading this summer.”
Jonathan Douglas, Director of the National Literacy Trust
The campaign was launched at London Gatwick Airport today with a book signing by Kid Normal authors and campaign ambassadors, Greg James and Chris Smith.
Head to wordsforlife.org.uk to download your free top tips for families and activity sheets for children of all ages.