Big Book Share

Prison punishes families as well as offenders. It can take away the vital role of a parent, often a father, in the formative years of his children's life. Reading can help to keep the family bond strong and can help an imprisoned parent to be a positive role model to his or her children.

So we've developed a scheme where children's librarians help prisoners to choose a book, to make a recording of themselves reading it and to give it to their children.

The Big Book Share is funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and we are now developing a training programme to strengthen links between libraries and prisons and between prisoners and their families so that prisoners and their families know about libraries and are confident about using them.

Our partners for the current phase of The Big Book Share are Association of Senior Children's and Education Librarians (ASCEL); CILIP Prison Libraries Group; NOMS (National Offender Management Service); the DfES Offenders Learning & Skills Unit; the Writers in Prison Network; HMP Blundeston and Suffolk Libraries; HMP Nottingham and Nottingham City Libraries. We are very pleased to be working with them.

If you are interested in finding out more or want to take part in a training session, please Contact us. You can also order a copy of The Big Book Share 2 Handbook for public librarians and prison librarians who want to develop family reading programmes for prisoners from our Shop.