The Year of Reading

2026 is the Year of Reading, set up by the Department for Education and the National Literacy Trust to reverse the decline in reading for pleasure, their aims are “to reimagine reading and (re)engaging with reading in all its forms.”

As you can imagine as a children’s author, reading and developing a love of reading from an early age is something that I’m so passionate about. According to the National Literacy Trust and other literacy organisations, reading can help children develop a sense of empathy, build confidence, spark imagination, expand horizons and support learning. Understanding the world around us is one of the ways I have found reading has enriched my life, as well as given me a way to escape my everyday and use my imagination more. 

It’s one of the reasons we include books into our new baby gift boxes, as there’s strong evidence that being read to from birth can help children with language development and creates a bond between baby and reader. According to research carried out by Professor Sam Wass and shared by the Booktrust, “the physical closeness of reading shapes our body rhythms” and found that “books and stories are natural tools for learning.” There is evidence also that sharing books is completely different to sharing a screen.

What can we all do to support reading?

As part of our support for reading in all its forms, we’ve committed to some book gifting and reading projects this year. Firstly we are supporting the Children’s Book Project which gives books directly to disadvantaged children across the country, including children of prisoners. We believe in their vision that children should have access to and autonomy of choice of a wide range of reading materials including good quality children’s books. This is why we’ve committed to donating 600 brand new books to this charity, only made possible through our partnerships with businesses, who help us to fund our campaigns and projects.

We also have our Remember Reading project which is a lovely project all about sharing our memories of reading at every and any age and stage of life. Finding inspiration in reading and stories through the sharing of interviews with a wide range of people. We hope that by sharing what people love about reading can inspire us all to pick up a book and read.

We know that even though we are living in a digital age, accessing books and stories is still as valuable as ever in connecting with one another and the world around us. Something which sits at the heart of what we do.

We can support reading in all its forms by:

• Allocate time for reading
• Model reading behaviour
• Read together
• Show that reading is about more than books – such as reading signs, labels, magazines, subtitles
• Encourage reading for a range of reasons – facts or imaginative
• Create reading friendly spaces – switch off external noise, like tvs and radios, have cosy corners for reading
  

When was the last time you read?

As author Ursula K le Guin said, “We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel… is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.”

Reading is important at every age, from childhood to adulthood, so my question to you is, what book will you pick up next?

For further information about our Remember Reading campaign or other reading/book projects, head to our Books for Communities page or email us at info@eco-able.co.uk