…What’s been happening in Leicestershire? 
The National Year of Reading was kicked off in style with a launch at County Hall which saw a wide variety of people come together to celebrate reading in all its forms. We were joined by crime author Sam Hayes and the winners of the Leicestershire County Council ‘Design a Bookmark’ competition joined the party. Hundreds of school children from around the county entered the competition and the 4 winners got to see their bookmarks printed and displayed at the launch.
The beginning of the year also saw a national membership campaign in April to encourage more people to make use of the free services that libraries offer. In total over 2300 people joined a Leicestershire library during the month. In fact since April a whopping 21876 people have joined a county library – maybe we can double that next year?
In July we had local poet Mark Goodwin’s launch of his collection ‘Else’ at Loughborough Library. There was a huge turnout for the event and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the readings, anecdotes and refreshments. And over the summer holidays children aged 4-12 years were invited to join the annual Summer Reading Challenge. This year the theme was sport to fit in with the Beijing Olympics and August’s National Year of Reading theme, Read the Game. The ‘Team Read’ began in June and children were asked to read at least 6 books over the summer in order to gain their gold medal. Alongside this libraries ran a reading promotion for adults called Focus on Sport; displays in libraries provided displays of books linked with sport and reads for those people who just wanted to escape sport for the summer.
September brought with it the first event with our National Year of Reading author Lynda Page. Lynda has visited 9 different sites and spoken to hundreds of people since her first event at Wigston Library. Fans from all over the county have been flocking to see her and to hear her amusing stories about how she got to be such a well-known and well-loved author. Also, in September Markfield Library officially launched its Reading Garden with activities for all ages. The Wild and Wonderful Open Day included stories, treasure hunts, face painting, planting bulbs and much, much, more.
The Family Learning Festival in October saw us celebrating the theme Word of Mouth with storytelling, live literature and reading out loud. The Festival itself brought stories to life by inviting families to work together to make puppets, masks and fairy-tale models.
November’s theme was Screen Reads so libraries focused on encouraging people to read the book to their favourite film – are the original novels better or worse than the film version, why not try one of the titles of the month to find out? Coalville Library also held a Crime Fiction Festival during the month, which included a talk about Agatha Christie and her much-loved books, a Whodunit interactive play and a visit from crime author Sam Hayes.
There is still more to come in December and libraries will have reading events carrying on into the New Year, so keep an eye open for them.
Karen Humphries, National Year of Reading Co-ordinator
