Key facts
Area: Yorkshire and the Humber
Grant recipient: Doncaster Book Awards Ltd
Project: The Community Readers Project
Programme: Awards for All
Date of award: January 2012
Amount awarded: £9,975
The Doncaster Book Awards are designed to encourage the use of libraries, develop reading and literacy skills at the same time, while promoting social interaction across different communities in Doncaster.
The Big Lottery fund supported the eighth annual event with an award of £9,975. This helped to create the biggest award ceremony yet, increase involvement from schools and libraries across Doncaster and create a more interactive Olympic inspired event.
The ‘Lits a Knockout’ event was aimed to target and involve more young boys with it’s Olympic theme. Statistics show that the number of boys reading at an expected standard is below that for girls and boy’s enthusiasm for reading tends to be lower.
Lesley Hurworth stated ‘Anything we can do to get a boy to enjoy and pick up a book we will try. Today we have used sport and we have even got Doncaster Rovers here. It’s all about fun and linking into books. The funding has been absolutely essential - it would have not happened if it had not been for Awards for All.’
The grant covered the cost of the event expenses including coach hire making it possible for children from 20 schools across Doncaster to attend. They also developed a promotional website to help involve children more with the award process. In addition, the funding allowed the children to meet some of their favourite shortlisted authors including Philip Ardagh who wrote when Bunnies Turn Bad and Tanya Landman author of Poison Pen.
‘Lits a Knockout’ had a fantastic range of races, all inspired by books shortlisted for the Awards by the children, including ‘When Bunnies Turn Badminton’ and the ‘Racing the Dead’, which saw many children dressed up as zombies dragging themselves up to the finishing line! A Guinness World record was also achieved at the event in the ‘reading relay’ challenge – 481 children and adults took part in reading a line from the previous year’s winner The Thornwaite Inheritance.
The children thoroughly enjoyed the Awards. Abby, Year 9, Don Valley Academy said "It was great fun to watch people competing and I’m sure it was even more fun to take part. I helped out on the world record attempt and so many joined in! The end with Gareth P Jones was funny too and all the authors were really entertaining. Also, Billionaire Boy won the book award and that is a great book. It was probably the most fun I have ever had on a school day."