It’s especially important that children are given the opportunity to express themselves openly, as well as respect and listen to those around them – and we’ve found that literature and shared reading sessions provide a particularly effective outlet for these things to happen. Quite spectacularly as a result of engaging in shared reading 89% of children in schools across Liverpool said that they were more confident discussing their ideas and opinions as a part of being in a group.

Even more encouraging is the fact that 96% of children agreed that they were more understanding towards the ideas and opinions of other people as a result of shared reading. Absolutely wonderful findings, showing that reading isn’t just about academic education - but emotional development too.

Over the next couple of months, open Read To Lead courses will be coming to Northern Ireland, Barnsley and London – any individual is eligible to sign up and take part. So if you want to share the joys of shared reading in your community or perhaps if your New Year’s resolution is to do something different to make a difference then being part of Read To Lead and becoming a trained shared reading facilitator is  for you.

And if you want to celebrate Dickens’ bicentenary in unique but what would surely be Dickens-approved style, there could be no better way to do so than to embark on a  Read To Lead course. We could all take a tip from the young David Copperfield:

This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think of it, the picture always arises in my mind of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life.

On a Read To Lead course you’ll find that reading is indeed for life and full of life.

Read To Lead Northern Ireland
Holywood Library, BT18 9AE
3rd, 10th, 17th February; 10am-4pm
(This course takes place over Dickens’ bicentenary, so there may just be some Dickens on offer to read…!)

Read To Lead Barnsley
Barnsley Digital Media Centre, S70 2JW
8th, 15th, 22nd February; 10am-4pm

Read To Lead London
Central Venue TBC
12th, 19th, 26th March; 10am-4pm 

For more information on any of these courses, please contact Jessica Reeves on 0151 207 7221/jessicareeves@thereader.org.uk or Casi Dylan on 0141 357 1738/casidylan@thereader.org.uk . You can also download a booking form in Word or PDF formats.

As part of their reading sessions, children in three Liverpool schools we’ve been working in have been discovering the connection between literature and life. In our recent evaluation, 76% of children said that they can relate their life to things they’ve read in books more readily as a result of taking part in sessions.

Keen Readers should tune into Radio 4 next week, as Stop What You’re Doing and Read This! has been chosen as Book of the Week.

This new collection of essays from Vintage Books is a funny and inspiring mission statement about the transformative power of reading; the tangible impact it can have on our wellbeing and its importance as a fundamental part of our existence.

Five of the ten essays have been adapted for the radio, including those by Michael Rosen, Jeanette Winterson, and Mark Haddon. The book itself contains a contribution by The Reader Organisation’s Jane Davis, sharing her passionate belief in improving lives through literature and spreading the message of the Reading Revolution.

Don’t forget to join the conversation on the Stop blog where you can share reading recommendations, discuss the future of the book, and much more. Jane herself has just posted a piece: ‘To Go Forward, Go Back’.

Already Number 1 on the Guardian Bookshop’s bestseller list, you can read her full contribution by buying your own copy here.

Book of the Week: Stop What You’re Doing and Read This!

Radio 4, 9^th-13^th Jan, 9:45am and 00:30am.

Our recent evaluation of reading sessions in Liverpool schools has revealed that 80% of children questioned agreed that reading helped them to relax. This is great news – and shows another aspect of reading that is so beneficial to children’s lives.

We have found that engaging in regular shared reading sessions not only makes kids want to read more often but also inspires them to widen their reading horizons – when questioned, 86% of children taking part in shared reading sessions in Liverpool schools said that they enjoyed reading stories and poems that they wouldn’t have normally chosen to read if they were doing so by themselves. Shared reading definitely helps to bring a good variety of literature into children’s personal reading selections.

Alice Ozma of Millville, New Jersey, on the US east coast, found in books a deep and lasting form of communication between herself and her father. When she was nine years old, they set themselves a reading challenge – he would read to her every day for 100 days. This so captured Alice that when they had achieved this, she suggested that they read for 1,000 nights. This grew into a reading relationship that they came to call ‘The Streak’. It lasted nearly nine full years, right up until Alice left home for college.

They both found that ‘The Streak’ helped them to stay connected in the midst of family fracturing: her parent’s divorce and mother’s departure, her father’s management of single parenting, her sister leaving home. Alice remembers one book that they shared about a brother and sister who are abandoned by their mother (Journey by Patricia MacLachlan), that provided a parallel world for father and daughter to navigate together, safely.

This is a lovely example of how sharing reading strengthens families. As Alice puts it in an interview with The Guardian, ‘I can’t imagine what our relationship would have been like without it. It gave us something to talk about, because there isn’t always something to talk about – we’re 40 years apart. We have quotes in our vocabulary that are from books that we use without even thinking. It’s become our shared language’.

At The Reader Organisation, as we read with children and young people every day in groups and one to one in their homes, we are watching our young people find increased confidence, resilience, broader horizons, and better relationships through shared reading. Alice Ozma felt so strongly about the importance of reading for pleasure between children and their carers that she has written a memoir of her experience in The Promise, which she hopes will inspire its readers to begin their own reading ‘Streak’ with the children they care for. She says, ‘It would mean a lot to me if parents would at least give this a try’. Here are some of the reasons we are with Alice on that one:

• Shared reading transports the child to many different worlds. Some are imaginary, but others are real places that exist outside the child’s perception of life – thus expanding their horizons.

• Sharing reading introduces the child to difficult experiences – they can learn from the ways that characters in books handle difficult situations and use this as a model for their own behaviour.

• Issues dealt with in the story can often quell fears; seeing characters in a book having similar experiences to them can often reassure that it is ‘normal’ and ‘ok’; that they are not the only ones.

• Reading can act as a support; it can help a child to feel better if they are having a bad time. It is relaxing and allows you to slip into a story different from the reality of your own life. In this way, the book can often take the role of a comfort blanket.

• Reading together can act as a starting point for discussion between child and adult. Sometimes this discussion can be simple, other times it indirectly addresses issues that have been bothering the child in a way that makes them feel safe and able to confide.

• Shared reading is quality time spent together, a bonding experience that fosters one-to-one communication between adult and child.

• Reading with a child helps to reassure them that they are important to you and that you enjoy spending time with them.

• Studies have shown that children whose parents / carers have been involved with their reading development show greater emotional and social development (Allen & Daly, 2002). This includes having a greater resilience to stress, greater life satisfaction, more self-control, greater social adjustment, greater mental health, more supportive relationships, greater social competence, more positive peer relations, more tolerance, more successful marriages, and fewer delinquent behaviours (Desforges & Abouchaar, 2003).

Our recent evaluation into Get Into Reading in Liverpool schools has brought forth some wonderful results which show that shared reading has a significant impact on children, boosting their enthusiasm for books. A staggering 98% of children said that they enjoyed shared reading sessions – very encouraging for bolstering a passion for reading amongst kids.

Phil has set up the centre to “establish more real world links, rather than just be inside a discipline”, and see analysis of the benefits of reading, in groups or alone, be translated into policy. Amongst us Reader folk enjoying delicious sandwiches were developmental and clinical psychologists, occupational therapists, health scientists, social anthropologists, and doctors.

The Centre will work in partnership with us in a variety of ways, providing a strong link between our practical delivery and their research, in the hope there can be an influence on public policy. This is knowledge exchange at its very strongest and most real. An example of this in practice is the Therapeutic Benefits of Reading in Relation to Depression, which was a collaborative research project between ourselves, the University and the Primary Care Trust, the findings of which were published last year and have fed directly into winning new Get Into Reading commissions and providing a way to measure the quality of group delivery.

CRILS is creating a demonstrable model of practice, which if successful could be rolled out nationally. We’re excited to see what’s in store and in working with the centre to further develop that Reading Revolution…

Anna joins a growing list of Writers That Support The Reader:

• Blake Morrison (Patron)
  
• David Almond
• A.S. Byatt
• Frank Cottrell Boyce
• Howard Jacobson
• Brian Keenan
• Andrew Motion
• Jeanette Winterson

Who will be next…?