Children's Reading Partners
Children's Reading Partners is a national consortium of children's publishers and librarians. It is a major cross-industry collaboration involving the entire UK library network and 13 publishers.
We set up Children's Reading Partners in 2008 to effect a step change in the way that publishers and libraries work together to widen children's access to books, authors and reading resources. Children's Reading Partners successfully provides opportunities for librarians and publishers to come together, share information, work out common goals and develop new ways of working collaboratively.
Children's Reading Partners Summer Roadshow
This year our summer roadshow was held at Peter's Bookselling Services in Birmingham.
With the showroom packed to full capacity, guests included representatives from all partner publishers and librarians from throughout the UK, as well as numerous authors and illustrators, including David Gatward, Samira Osman, Graham Marks and Sarah McIntyre.
Publisher presentations about forthcoming titles were held in the morning, followed by the ever-popular 'speed-meeting' between librarians, publishers and authors.
"New relationships started and old ones cemented." Attending Librarian
"This is the best awareness event that I have attended." Attending Librarian
Roadshows
Children's Reading Partners runs regular roadshows, which bring publishers, librarians and writers together. Their aim is to support libraries and publishers to work together to run events and promotions and to share information about current issues and developments.
Publishers have the opportunity to promote new titles directly to librarians, build new library contacts and support librarians to promote lesser known titles to their readers. Librarians get the chance to learn about new authors and new titles, make publisher contacts and meet and talk directly to children's authors.
The first Children's Reading Partners Roadshow took place in London in November 2008. Since then we have received a fantastic response from all involved. Not only have the roadshows allowed publishers and librarians to build invaluable new contacts but they have also inspired enthusiasm across both sectors.
The next roadshow will be in Manchester in November.
Check this web page for updates.
Spotlight
Spotlight is a promotion of new children's titles run in collaboration with Children's Reading Partners.
Spotlight aims:
* to introduce children to the best new writing and expand their reading horizons
* to help parents make informed reading choices for their children
* to enhance libraries' promotion of current children's literature
The new autumn selection of Spotlight books for September to December 2010 has now been chosen. To see the full list of titles, download additional materials and find out more, go to our Spotlight webpage.
Background
Children's Reading Partners was launched in May 2008 as a two year pilot. This was in response to the book trade starting to understand the important work libraries were doing with young readers and as a way of building on the successes of our original Reading Partners project for adults.
We are lucky enough to have in the main body of the partnership 13 publishers (including one consortium of several independents) and library representatives from throughout the UK. The 13 publishers are:
- Bloomsbury
- Bounce
- Egmont
- Faber
- Hachette
- HarperCollins
- Macmillan
- Oxford University Press
- Puffin
- Raintree
- Random House
- Scholastic
- Simon and Schuster
Children's Reading Partners also has the very active support of The Publishers' Association, the CILIP Youth Libraries' Group, ASCEL (Association of Senior Children's and Education Librarians) and the School Libraries Association.
In its first year, Children's Reading Partners involved over 77% of the UK library network and engaged over 30,000 children - a number which is growing.
Children's Reading Partners is also feeding into some of our other projects for children and young people such as Chatterbooks, Headspace and our young people's website groupthing.org.
Please get in touch if you would like to find out more.
Resources
Reading Agency links
External links
Steven Page's Article in the Bookseller
Download files
Contact
Tricia Kings, senior project manager