Shared reading groups at The Reader Org

Our friends The Reader Org have sent us word and pictures of the Kensal Book Break group reading The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham, sharing their personal responses to the book as they read it together, over a cup of tea and biscuits.
“This book has got everything; gossip, history, romance. A gripping story so far, can’t wait to find out what happens next.”

In all of their shared reading groups they read aloud together from the same text, often taking several months to read a whole book as they share the experience of the story unfolding week by week. They tell us: "It's brilliant for us to have these sets of several copies of the same book which we can keep for as long as it takes us to read the whole book, and will be read by other groups in future."

You can find all their weekly shared reading groups here: http://www.thereader.org.uk/reading-with-us.aspx.

Now please go back to Give a Book and help us carry on doing this.

Family Days with Bags of Books

Give a Book has just started giving our gorgeous GAB BAGs to prisons for their Family Days. The bags contain books, pencils and pads for the visiting children. PRG have sent us this report:

The first Family Day at HMP Wandsworth was clearly a brilliant success and both books and bags were a triumph.
As it happens, one of the fathers who was there is also in the reading group and added his thanks in person. He said his own five-year-old was too excited to sit still but that there were lots who spent a long time sitting with their dads and reading together. And he thought having the book and the bag to take home would really help the children remember the day and the enjoyment of being together.

Here are some of the other comments received :-
"My daughter loved the book, it's one she'd read at school so she was very pleased"
"the gift [of a book] was a wonderful surprise"
"It was wonderful for my son to have something to remember the day by"

"the bag is great; I'll use it to take my art work home"
"my wife says my son is writing notes for me in the pad he received on the family day, thank-you"
"thank-you very much, my children loved it"
"the whole day was a fantastic opportunity to bond with my family, the bag of goodies was an added bonus"
"It was wonderful to sit and read the book to my daughter during the visit, it helped us to re-bond and helped us escape our environment for a while"
So thanks to PRG and HMP Wandsworth for sending this feedback which we love to get and thanks to everyone who helps Give a Book do what we love to do. Now please go back to Give a Book.