Our Writer in Residence, Camilla Reid, says goodbye and announces the winners of her competition.
Camilla Reid signs books for her competition winners
When BookTrust invited me to become their Writer in Residence at the beginning of the year, I was delighted and excited, not least because I was the first author of early years books to have been awarded the role.
The residency is a chance for authors to campaign on behalf of a cause about which they are particularly passionate, and I knew immediately that I wanted to raise awareness of the importance of regularly sharing books at home in the early years.
Because you’re reading this on the BookTrust website, the chances are that you already know that sharing books with a beloved adult has a profound effect on a small child’s cognitive development, on school outcomes, and on family wellbeing.
However, having worked in publishing and written early years books for over 25 years, I’m aware that my industry hardly ever holds events to promote reading with early years families, something which has always frustrated me.
There are understandable reasons for this: running events for babies and toddlers is difficult and it’s definitely the less glamorous end of publishing – it’s considered to be neither ‘literary’ nor starry, so it rarely gets media attention.
However, this has always struck me as short-sighted, because hooking families into the habit of reading in the early years is the best way to guarantee having readers for many years to come, as well as having vital social benefits, of course.
So my plan at the start of my WIR tenure was to connect with early years settings of all kinds in order to understand what work they’re doing to encourage shared reading at home, if any, and to see if there were opportunities to build on this.
Before I got started, the very first thing I did was to read the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework (EYFS), a meaty guide produced by the Department of Education to set the standards for early years settings – a bible for everything from safeguarding to record-keeping.
And interestingly, while the EYFS places great emphasis on the importance of reading and stories within the EY setting, no mention is made of EY settings’ role in actively promoting shared reading at home.
This, to me, is a significant oversight, because many millions of children attend nursery or preschool – both private and state-run – and there would seem to be a substantial opportunity here to work with these settings to get the message across that regular shared reading at home is crucial.
Over the last six months I have listened to inspiring and dedicated early years practitioners, teachers, practice managers, and owners, in a range of settings. I discovered that some practitioners and settings were keenly aware of the power of shared EY reading at home, and are working hard to promote it, setting up mini lending libraries, book bag schemes, and reading displays.
But I also found that many practitioners were mainly focusing their energy on sharing books and stories in the nursery setting. This is absolutely fair enough: it’s what the Early Years Statutory Framework requires of them, and they do a great job of this.
The key, and perhaps unsurprising, takeaway that I got from every single setting, though, was that families were increasingly unlikely to share books and were, more than ever, giving their babies and toddlers screens instead, citing exhaustion and time pressure as the reasons for doing so.
The whole experience of being Writer in Residence has been fascinating – it has given me the chance to talk with all sorts of people I wouldn’t have otherwise, and to explore this huge, critical subject.
It has felt extremely worrying at times, and I remain deeply concerned for the children who are missing this important stage of their development, as it will significantly impact their life chances.
But as my Writer in Residence tenure comes to an end, there are a couple of cheering glimmers of hope that I’m choosing to focus on.
The first is Waterstones Children’s Laureate Frank Cottrell Boyce’s work around early years reading – with his second conference set to take place next year – and then there is the excellent news which came in July that the government is making 2026 a National Year of Reading, with a particular emphasis on early years.
I look forward to seeing how the plans for the campaign shape up, and I hope that a significant part of it will involve working with early years settings and their families.
The only thing that remains for me to do is to thank the fantastic BookTrust team for this wonderful, life-changing opportunity – and to announce the winner of my competition!
I asked early years settings to send in photos of their initiatives encouraging families to share books at home. I’m delighted to say that there are TWO winners: Teddies Tots Nursery (in Watford, Hertfordshire) and Ravenswood Nursery (in Heaton, Newcastle Upon Tyne), who each receive 10 signed copies of my books for their lending libraries!
Here are their initiatives – I hope you feel inspired to copy them!
At Teddies Tots Nursery, the staff have set up bookshelves in their reception area, encouraging parents and carers to “bring and borrow” books.
When families have finished with books, they donate them to the nursery and are placed in the bookshelves so everyone can benefit from them.
“Children love coming in to choose a book to take home with them and it also makes reading more accessible for the families who might not be able to afford to buy new books all the time and are too busy to get to the local library,” said Nursery Manager Chloe. “Parents have told us they love this idea.”
And mum Amy said her sons, who attend the nursery, “absolutely love books”.
“Nearly every morning, when dropping his little brother Arlo off at nursery first, Grayson will sit by the book shelf and read books until Mummy is ready to drop him off at his room at nursery,” she said.
“We have taken books home to read for bedtime or to cut down on TV time! And we have even brought books in to leave on the shelf and Grayson has loved dropping them off (but always manages to find a book or two to take with him again!)”
At Ravenswood Nursery, the team has transformed an “unloved outdoor storage cupboard” into a very much loved library for children, parents and carers to access at drop-off and pick-up time.
And while they’ve done a lot to make this transformation happen, they’ve still got big plans for what’s next.
Sarah from the nursery said: “We are looking to develop this initiative with high quality books for babies, books with diverse representation and perhaps some song bags and story sacks too!”