I’m so excited to be finally doing this and getting books out to you all.
It’s brilliant to have children reading great stories, helping them to find the ones they love. We provide books that show the world in all its exciting diversity, finding characters who are flawed and interesting and multi-faceted. Getting more children to see themselves in the pages of books and seeing their own potential really is a great job.
Learning to read
Our 4-year-old has learned to read this year. It has been amazing to see more of the world opening up to him as he has started to interpret signs, to read labels in the Supermarket, (especially S-W-E-E-T-S). He’s reading stories on his own and making choices about the books he wants to read.
Seeing the freedom it has given him and how much he has grown in confidence through the act of acquiring this skill is incredible, but he is one of the lucky ones.
The statistics
A quarter of children leave primary school without being able to read well. 770,000 children in the UK don’t own a single book. With reading being such a vital skill, here at Little Box of Books we want to do as much as we possibly can to be part of the change, by working with organisations doing amazing things for children’s literacy all over the country.
What can we do?
This is why I’m so pleased that we have our first charity partner. The excellent and amazing Doorstep Library operates in some of the most disadvantaged areas of London. Volunteers for the charity visit the homes of children with stools and books and sit and read, lending books, talking about stories and engaging with them and their families. It has proved lifechanging for many and we want to help them hit their target of reading with 2000 families a week by 2020.
Together with our subscribers and our initiative to donate a book to charity, for every box we sell, we hope to be able to support this amazing organisation as they grow and look to expand. They hope to do this in London and nationally so that more children receive the support they need to become lifelong readers. As Doorstep Library says, “words have the power to take children places, not just in their imagination but in their lives.”
If you haven’t yet subscribed and would like to, please head here, https://littleboxofbooks.co.uk/subscribe/. For more information on Doorstep Library, please head here, https://littleboxofbooks.co.uk/charity/.