This summer we were excited to bring you the Summer Reading Challenge 2024, Marvellous Makers! The 2024 challenge from The Reading Agency was all about creativity. From dance to drawing, junk modelling to music, there was something for everyone!
There were plenty of new books linked to your favourite creative arts and we held free activities at the libraries over the Summer. We had great fun being creative!
The Summer Reading Challenge is developed by The Reading Agency and delivered in partnership with public libraries. The 2024 theme was developed in partnership with Create, a leading charity bringing the creative arts to those who need it most.
CREATE aims “To use the creative arts to connect, empower, inspire and upskill society’s most disadvantaged and vulnerable people, raising aspirations, building self-esteem, reducing isolation and enhancing wellbeing.”
The Summer Reading Challenge is a FREE holiday activity for children. It’s all about reading for fun, aiming to improve children’s reading skills and confidence. The Challenge is the UK’s biggest free reading for pleasure programme for children and runs every year throughout the summer holidays!
Children’s reading skills can ‘dip’ during the long summer holidays without regular access to books and encouragement to read for pleasure. The Summer Reading Challenge helps to tackle this by regularly reaching over 700,000 children each year, motivating them to visit the library and keep reading during the holidays, which, in turn, vitally boosts children’s confidence and maintains their reading skills in preparation for the new school term.
The Summer Reading Challenge takes place during the summer holidays and Milton Keynes City Libraries ran the challenge from 19 July until 7 September.
You were able to sign up at your local library from Friday 19 July 2024 and read any books of your choice to collect special stickers. After reading your six books, we presented readers with a medal and a certificate of achievement - all for FREE.
We hope you also visited the digital platform too! You could sign up online at summerreadingchallenge.org.uk and use the book sorter to discover new books, find fun reading activities, play games, watch videos and write book reviews.
We recruited many young volunteers to help us out over the summer and they enjoyed taking the time to chat with you about the books you read.
Remember – this is reading for fun and you can read whatever library books you like and however you’d like to read them – whether its fiction, fact books, poetry, joke books, picture books, graphic novels, audiobooks or eBooks.
[Marvellous Makers illustrations by Natelle Quek and logo artwork by Lizzie Everard. All © The Reading Agency 2024.]
Milton Keynes Central Library, 555 Silbury Boulevard, Milton Keynes MK9 3HL