The big secret to empowering reading children is not too difficult to work out. Give them books. Give them books that are interesting, exciting and fun, books that attract them and get them reading without thinking about it.
Children’s Book Network has, over the last twelve years, assembled a reading list of note – one that works. Our 5 Reading toolboxes each contain a wonderful selection of published books as well as a specially commissioned handbook with more than 100 stories, poems, articles, ideas, projects, writing skills, reading training and pure fun.
A classroom with a reading toolbox in it is well on the way to being a reading classroom. But our young people need even more. We are launching the Hundred Books Project where we aim to have 100 additional books on a shelf in each participating classroom. This would be a community project to bring more involvement and interest from parents and interested others. Saying that ‘children don’t read’ is not enough.
DO something about it!
During 2026, we will try out A Year of Reading using the Red Reading Toolbox as the base, with additional reading packs (from the toolbox) for every week of the first three terms.
The method is simple:
EVERY Friday in term time, the children read for the last half-hour of the school day. If the curricular requirements and movement of the children around the school make this difficult, an alternative half-hour can be chosen.
The first two participating schools are in Stanford (W. Cape) and Calitzdorp (Klein Karoo)
We feel that the simplicity of this project – and the lack of extra burden on teachers (children can administer the reading half-hour and CBN team will visit once a term for training) makes it something that can be transferred to other schools, other situations.
We have the materials. We start in January 2026.
