Ordering education books for the library is never dull. Last week I requested a collection of essays by key educational theorists, and I have now just asked our amazing library Acquisitions team to order Pugly Bakes a Cake – an award-winning book about an adventurous pug who, um yes, bakes cakes! This book request came from an 8-year-old girl who was visiting the library with a group from her school. Apparently is the “funniest book ever” and I am delighted to be adding it to the Curriculum Resources Fiction collection, from which our education students and trainee teachers can borrow books to read with children on their school placements. We have just completed a series of four visits by children from a local Canterbury primary school as part of an initiative called “Books and Beyond”, led by a group of final year BA HONS Primary Education students who are Reading for Pleasure Ambassadors, and their tutor. For each session, the group of 20 Year 3 and Year 6 children walked to Augustine House with their teachers and spent an hour in small groups with the students looking at books and reading them together. The terrace area space on floor 2 was set out with an arrangement of small and larger tables, comfortable sofas and large beanbags so that children could choose a space that they felt comfortable to read in (unsurprisingly the beanbags were most popular!)


Some books were selected in advance to appeal to a range of the children’s interests and displayed on the table for the children to choose. This included fiction from our Junior Fiction section (classmark JF) and non-fiction titles on a range of subjects including space, history, and sport. The “Little people, big dreams” biographies were very popular, and fortunately we have lots of books from this series in stock. We also included big books which are great for group-teaching and some fiction story-sacks which include puppets alongside the book and can help bring a story to life (found on the CR equipment shelves at Classmark CR 428.4).

The children also had the opportunity to browse the library shelves in Curriculum Resources with their student and they enjoyed discovering and selecting their own books to read. Searching for Harry Potter was popular, as were dinosaur and football books. One girl was very interested in fossils and we found a biography of Mary Anning. Another said that she liked Ancient Rome, so we discovered a lovely visual book, and I showed her some of the roman artefacts that we have in our CR equipment area, such as the Roman Lamp. The moving shelves caused great excitement and by the end of the session all the children were experts at pressing the buttons.

Children may find reading challenging, and the aims of these sessions included encouraging children to develop a love of reading and supporting them in developing their own reading identities. It was also a wonderful opportunity for the trainee teacher students to develop practice in the teaching of reading, by reading aloud exploring books together with the children. The notion of calling oneself a reader was gently encouraged and everyone involved wore “Ask me what I am reading” badges which provoked lively discussions about what our favourite books were. The children also designed their own lanyards describing their favourite reading topic and took home “I am a university library reader” bookmarks.

Bookmark given to children

For many children this was their first experience being in a large library, or in a university setting. Some were intrigued to know what the other people they could see working in the library were doing and we talked about why students at university might need to read lots of books to learn about the subject they are studying (I had to quickly check how many books we have in the library when asked!) One child was fascinated by a very heavy, lengthy tome on Tort Law that she found on a moving shelf and showed everyone that it was 487 pages long – possibly the longest book in the world…
The enthusiasm from the children was fantastic. They were excited to be there and joined in animated conversations about the books that they discovered. As a librarian I was gratified when they wanted to know how to find a particular book or topic in the library, so for the second session we set up the library catalogue on a couple of laptops so that the children could do their own searches, then try to locate books on the shelves. If we did not have a favourite book in stock, then I added it our book order wish list (hence the Pugly order!) The students also added their own favourite children’s book recommendations, so our Curriculum Resources collection is developing nicely with many fresh new titles in collaboration with advice from the experts.

One week we displayed a selection of books carefully chosen from our Historical Children’s Fiction Collection in the library archives, with advice from our Humanities Librarian, which contains works from 1871-1910. The children were intrigued by the painted illustrations and tiny typeface used in the some of the books and contrasted them with the writing and pictures in more modern children’s books.
The final session ended with hot chocolate as a treat (kept well away from any precious books), with squirty cream, marshmallows and sprinkles. As one child observed we are incredibly lucky to work in a library that has a café – as we can get hot chocolate ANY TIME WE WANT IT! In the final discussions the children were all keen to share which books they had liked reading the most and what they had enjoyed about their visits. The Primary Education students captured feedback from the children about their experiences (including “it was spectacular”) – and you can discover more about this project, including some of the children’s comments, on their Instagram page: @readingforpleasurecccu.

Children’s feedback after their first visit
readingforpleasurecccu (2024) ‘Books and Beyond: Event 1’ [Instagram]. 18 January. Available at: www.instagram.com/p/C2Pdc9Hs2ty/?igsh=MTVmd216dGVoaHc0Zw== (Accessed: 14 February 2024).

We also had very positive feedback from the school teachers, headteacher and governor who participated in the visits, and we hope to facilitate more events like this in the library in future. Bringing the local community into the university and sharing our resources is an important part of our work as an institution, and the library is privileged to be part of an initiative to develop future readers and encourage a love of reading. The partnership work between academic staff, students, library staff, teachers and pupils made this a brilliant experience for all involved. Now I just need to update our Harry Potter books, track down a pop-up book about volcanoes, and see if we can buy some spiderman comics…

If you are an education student then please do come and explore our Curriculum Resources collection in Augustine House, and your new book and resources suggestions for the library are always welcome. Find out more about the collection here.

You can read more about Reading for Pleasure initiatives on the Open University website: https://ourfp.org/

Catherine Sherwood, Learning and Research Librarian (Education)