We’ve teamed up with Bupa Foundation to gift 15,000 paperback copies of The Book of Hopes (Bloomsbury Publishing) to thousands of primary schools across the country, providing an essential boost of hope to thousands of children during the second national lockdown.
The Book of Hopes is Bloomsbury’s collection of inspiring short stories, artwork and poems from more than 130 much-loved children’s authors, illustrators and poets. It was launched and curated by author Katherine Rundell in response to the first national lockdown in April.
An original, digital version of the book was free to read exclusively on our website. Over 400,000 families visited the digital version and were inspired by work from the likes of Axel Scheffler, Onjali Q. Raúf and Jacqueline Wilson while many schools were closed in response to COVID-19.
To celebrate and support this fantastic initiative, we are launching a competition exclusively for the 5,000 schools who received the donated copies of The Book of Hopes.
The Scrapbook of Hopes challenge runs from 26 November to 31 January and asks teachers and their pupils to share how they’re spreading hope, optimism and a love of reading in their school and community, taking inspiration from the artwork and writing in Bloomsbury’s original version to create their own Scrapbook of Hopes.
Schools who enter will be in for a chance to win a set of Katherine Rundell’s best-selling books and exclusively signed artwork for their school library and one school will also receive a virtual visit from Katherine Rundell herself! Teachers can find more information, resources, guides for book displays and top tips here.
The National Literacy Trust research shows that reading for pleasure improves mental wellbeing, with more than half (59%) of children saying reading in lockdown this spring made them feel better and half (50%) saying it inspired them to dream about the future and so we are delighted to be increasing access to this wonderful book for thousands of primary school children.
Earlier this year, we were thrilled to see hundreds of thousands of people visit our website to download Bloomsbury’s magical Book of Hopes. The collection of writing and artwork provided much-needed light when the world seemed rather dark. As the country remains in the midst of its second lockdown, we are truly delighted to be spreading the unique joy of children’s literature with 5,000 primary schools. We are all in need of hope.
Jonathan Douglas CBE, Chief Executive of the National Literacy Trust
The activity continues the work the National Literacy Trust does with Twinkl, Babcock and Place2Be, using The Book of Hopes to support school learning.
More information on this initiative, ideas and resources and inspiration for the Scrapbook of Hopes competition can be found at: literacytrust.org.uk/scrapbook-of-hopes.