20 years of summer reading fun


This summer, the Reading Agency and libraries will be taking children across England, Scotland and Wales on a journey into space for the 20th anniversary of the Summer Reading Challenge. The Challenge is an annual event aimed at 4-11 year olds, and gets hundreds of thousands of children reading every summer. The format is simple: children are encouraged to read six books of their choice during the summer holidays with collectable incentives and rewards, plus a certificate for every child who completes the challenge.


Inspired by the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, this year’s theme, Space Chase will take young readers on an out-of-this-world adventure with super space family, The Rockets. The Challenge touches down in libraries across the UK this summer and features bespoke artwork from top children’s illustrator Adam Stower. Children can sign up for the Challenge at their local library at the start of the summer holidays – and as always it is completely free.


Twenty years ago, whilst sitting around a kitchen table, Anne Sarrag MBE developed the Challenge to help tackle the ‘summer slide’, a decline in children’s reading ability over the long summer holidays. Her experience with earlier publisher supported library initiatives such as the Big Idea competition in 1997, organised as part of National Libraries Week, demonstrated the benefits of a centrally organised national campaign and her conviction that reading could be a powerful equaliser for children of different backgrounds has helped make the Challenge an integral part of what the libraries offer people during the summer.


The first Summer Reading Challenge in 1999 was an instant success, with 440,000 children taking part in the first year. Since then, the Summer Reading Challenge has become one of the UK’s biggest children’s reading programmes: children have taken part in the Challenge over 13 million times. Many children love the Challenge so much they take part year after year and in 2018, just under 700,000 children took part.


Anne Sarrag © Dale Cherry for 2019 for The Reading Agency 12 Books for Keeps No.237 July 2019


Supported by publishers from its first year – David Fickling and Klaus Flugge were particularly enthusiastic – and with the backing of the library suppliers, the Challenge has also been particularly effective in encouraging partnership activity – regionally, libraries often team up with local businesses, while on a national level, partners have included the Beano, Tesco Bank (in Scotland), the BBC, and the Roald Dahl Story Company.


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