OWN BOOKS

OWN BOOKS is an innovative book recycling project to help children have their own books at home. 

Each month, every child at St Bartholomew's Church of England Acdemy visits our very own 'Own Books' library - situated between EYFS and KS1 - as part of their Reading Skills time.

We are incredibly lucky to have an extensive range of books available for children to choose from, which is not only fed into by the 'Own Books' charity, but also parent, teacher, children and local community contributions. 

We receive regular monthly deliveries in order to top up our 'Own Books Library'.  Our most recent delivery contained such an amazing array of up-to-date books from 'World of Books' (WOB) through the 'Own Books' scheme that we had to resist putting them in the KS2 library!

In addition to children accessing these books from our 'Own Books' library, we also take a selection of the books out onto the playground at least twice a week, in order to allow children and parents together to look at and choose books.  Two trollies are taken out: one on the KS1 library and one on the KS2 playground, containing relevant books. 

3 Year 6 Own Books monitors have taken ownership of the own books organisation and do a fantastic job!

WHAT IS THE AIM OF OWN BOOKS?

1  Encourage young children to develop an early love of books and reading through choosing and keeping their own books at home 

2  Encourage children to select books to take home when it suits them 

3  Avoid the need to buy or obligation to return the books

4 Remove any stress and financial constraints on parents over acquisition of books 

5 Encourage parents to read with their children at home

WHAT THEY DO

OWN BOOKS Is a child centred project aiming to give away many free books to children of all backgrounds and ages, without any discrimination. We believe passionately in children having books at home, sharing and enjoying them with their siblings and families.

Children and teens can choose from a wide variety of our books in participating Primary schools, and Secondary schools, and young children can choose OWN BOOKS to take home and keep, with help from parents, from participating Preschools, Nurseries, Parenting Centres, Play Groups, and Early Years Settings.

HOW IT BEGAN 

Julie de Bastion founded OWN BOOKS in 2014 while assisting with voluntary reading in her local primary school, discovered that some of the young children did not possess books at home. She asked local charity shops for any children’s books they could give her, and securing a regular supply of books, and with the School’s enthusiastic response, set up this new idea of giving away books for free, and for the children to take home and keep if they wished.

ENTHUSIASM FOR OWN BOOKS 

The children’s responses to this scheme were, needless to say highly enthusiastic.

After presenting a brief ASSEMBLY INTRODUCTORY TALK and displaying the books, the children were eager to have them.  They were completely amazed to discover, that they could just take the books home to keep and not have to bring them back. This is what makes the scheme different from library books.

Julie emphasises that this is a CHILD CENTRED PROJECT and encourages the school to select two older children to become OWN BOOKS MONITORS  so children can claim ownership of the scheme, sorting books, labelling them with the OWN BOOKS stickers and organising and displaying the OWN BOOKS BOOKSHELF as they like.

Please see the following website for more details or if you would like to get involved!

https://ownbooks.co.uk/