Relaunching the Children's Room - Our National Year of Reading Event
On Wednesday 29th April, we officially launched our new Children’s Room with a celebratory National Year of Reading event – and what an evening it was! Below we’ll share some of the learnings from the event but first, a little context…
The National Year of Reading - a UK-wide campaign designed to help more people rediscover the joy of reading – provides a perfect moment to pause and reflect. Personally, we might consider our own relationship with reading and reflect upon how our habits influence those around us. And, in a professional context, it provides an opportunity to think about how reading features in our working lives and where we might be able to influence others reading habits for the better.
Here in the bookshop we’re using this moment in a variety of ways. (Read more about our Go All In Season of events here: 'Go All In' Season and the National Year of Reading – Kibworth Books). In the Children’s Room, we embarked upon a renovation project with the mission of creating a space which felt even more inclusive, inspiring, cosy and playful for our youngest customers and their families, and which better reflects our values as a bookshop.
With that in mind, we’ve given over more space to picture books and graphic novels, invested in inclusive book stock to meet the needs of a diverse range of readers, and refined the bookshelf navigation to help readers find the books they need. We’ve also added some features for comfort, cosiness and creativity, including a new sofa, pouffes for perching on, a soft rug for storytime sessions, plants, a gallery wall and a play area for the little ones. ‘Playful’, ‘So very beautiful’, and ‘I could stay all day!’, has been some of the feedback from customers so far.
We knew we wanted to do something special to ‘reopen’ the room so Kirsty devised a plan to host a panel discussion focused on the National Year of Reading. Aimed at stakeholders who work with children, young people and families, we wanted to provide a forum for networking, to inspire some new initiatives, to offer support, and to ask the important question – ‘How can we work together to create a lasting legacy for the National Year of Reading, post 2026 and beyond?’
We were honoured to secure an impressive line-up of panellists for the discussion:
- Hannah Gold, multi-award winning and best-selling author, ambassador for World Book Day and the National Year of Reading, and Empathy Reads author
- Imogen Bond, Managing Director at Empathy Lab
- Libby Hamilton, Publisher at Rocket Bird Books
- Jane Walker, Sales and Marketing Director at Barrington Stoke
Our panelists generously shared their thoughts on the current crisis in reading for pleasure – the contributing factors and the challenges it presents – before sharing some top tips on concrete actions we might take within our own contexts.
Ideas included:
- Frame conversations about reading with children and teenagers in terms of curiosity rather than benefit. ‘Who would you like to meet in this story?’, ‘I wonder what would happen if…?’
- When creating reading nooks and school libraries, consider maximum comfort. Create a space children want to linger in, where they feel safe to explore and be themselves.
- Ensure book stock within classrooms and libraries is diverse, inclusive and reflects the community it serves.
- Embrace the reality of reading aloud to children. Recent research carried out by Farshore highlighted some of the reasons why parents aren’t reading to children. These included things such as: not sitting still; wanting to turn the pages and skip ahead; interrupting to ask questions; wanting the same book read over and over again; ‘they are too old’ to be read to. As the Farshore team summarized, “These responses suggest a sense of tedium and expose the fundamental misunderstanding: parents see
reading as skills practice, not pleasure.” Parents, of course, care deeply about their children, worrying about academic pressure, managing screen time, ensuring quality family time, happiness and mental health. Reading aloud with children and teens addresses all of these things, but we need to lean into the messiness of it. It doesn’t need to feel perfect; it’s a moment of connection, not a lesson. For more on the importance of reading aloud to children, read The Enchanted Hour – Kibworth Books
- Consider setting up ‘Baby Book Club’, supporting parents on the ‘how to’ of reading to children along with the ‘why’. Read more about the benefits of reading to babies here: The benefits of reading | BookTrust
- Use principles like James Clear’s ‘habit stacking’ to build reading / story time into your existing routines. E.g. Have a book near the kettle to dip into when you’re making a cuppa, or read to the children when they are in the bath. In a school setting, this might look like reading aloud to children as they settle into their seats at the start of the day, or using an audio book as a soundtrack to end of lesson tidying up.
- Create moments of necessary boredom into the day for daydreaming, picking up a book, or just talking about what you’ve been reading. Talk to children and young children about boredom as a concept, and why it's a good thing!
- When supporting reluctant readers, get curious first, make recommendations later. What is it about books which is turning them off? Is it finding a book, getting started, or an issue of stamina? Is further support needed, eg. for dyslexic / neurodivergent readers. Talk to the bookshop about specialist publishers we can recommend for this.
- Use and support your local library and bricks and mortar bookshop. Both are community spaces like no other, staffed and powered by passionate humans who really do care. Draw upon their expertise and support them in return so they can keep up the good work for their local communities.
- Donate to Pay It Forward schemes to get more books into the hands of children. For example, our PIF scheme is open for (and in need of) donations here: Charitable Donations – Kibworth Books
It’s impossible to capture all of the insights shared, both from our panelists and from the myriad conversations that took place amongst the guests as they networked and browsed the shelves of the Children’s Room. Hopefully however, this gives a small flavour and some food for thought!
At the end of the evening we asked all of our guests to fill in a pledge card with their commitment for the National Year of Reading. It was so heartening to see so much enthusiasm on display. Here’s a few of our favourites:
“Encourage kids to visit libraries during my school visits.” (Author)
“Read aloud to my children, even though they are independent readers.” (Academic from University of Leicester)
“Volunteer to teach a parent class on reading to nursery age children.” (Publisher)
“Get more books to the children we work with.” (Charity lead)
“Buy comfier chairs for the library and make plans to engage better with parents.” (School librarian)
Our Children’s Room will continue to develop from strength to strength over the coming year and we’re endlessly committed to supporting readers – young and not-so-young – over the National Year of Reading and beyond. We’d love to hear your thoughts though. What might this national focus on reading mean for you and your context? What will you pledge to do to promote reading for pleasure?