What can be more soothing as winter sets in than a book festival, encouraging people to read for half a million minutes, borough-wide
So snuggle up and hear a number of top authors reading their stories, during #Haltonreads from Monday 16 to Friday 27 November.
As Readathon has been cancelled this year, because of Covid 19, Halton Borough Council is using the Government grant to do a similar event but on-line.
#Haltonreads will see Halton’s Libraries running author sessions each day on YouTube.
Staff are aiming for a reading minute count for the borough of half a million minutes. And to get #HaltonReads trending on twitter.
You can Tweet your ongoing totals to @haltonlibraries and please use #Haltonreads, email them to widnes.library@halton.gov.uk or call 0151 907 8383.You can Tweet your ongoing totals to @haltonlibraries and please use #Haltonreads, email them to widnes.library@halton.gov.uk or call 0151 907 8383.
As part of the grant Halton Council is also subsidising book sales so that as many children as possible can afford to buy a book.
Halton Borough Council’s Executive Board Member for Libraries, Cllr Phil Harris, said: “We’re targeting schools but anyone can join in with the different activities.”
Here are just a few of the fab authors taking part:
Bali Rai: Bali is the Award winning author of (Un)arranged Marriage, Rani and Sukh, the Soccer Squad series and many more.
Matt Goodfellow: Children’s poet Matt’s book ‘Chicken on the Roof’ will definitely get kids loving poetry.
Steve Cole: Steve has written many wonderful children’s books including the Astrosaurs series, Young James Bond
and lots of Doctor Who novels – his session is going to be great fun.
Barbara Mitchelhill: Barbara has written books for all young tastes including her wonderful historical novels – Secret Suffragette, Run Rabbit Run and Billy’s Blitz and for fun there is the=‘No 1 Boy Detective’ series.
There are many more names to follow, make sure you follow @haltonlibraries us on social media to keep up to date.
Each author is producing a video for us that will be available on our YouTube channel for 24 hours from 8pm (dates listed on leaflet). This will allow teachers to check out the video before using it with their class.
Staff have included recommended ages for each video but this is just a guide and doesn’t prevent you accessing any of the videos.
To access the videos you will need to contact widnes.library@halton.gov.uk and tell us which videos you would like to access. We will send out an email with the access code the day before each video goes live.
You can then access the session at any time during the day.
The authors are also doing a live Q & A session with us the day after their video runs: 1.30pm to-2.30pm.
If your class would like to put any questions to an author please email them to – Nicola.lamb@halton.gov.uk before 12pm on their Q & A day.
When you sign up to get access to the videos we will send you a list of books by our featured authors that the children can buy.
Thanks to Arts Council England all books will be £3 each. If you send Nicola a list of books you want and the children’s names we’ll get bookplates signed by the authors to go in the front of the books