{"id":21434,"date":"2025-09-14T07:19:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T07:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/21434\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T07:19:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T07:19:06","slug":"summer-reading-campaign-supports-1500-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/21434\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer reading campaign supports 1,500 children"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The National Literacy Trust has encouraged 1,500 children to read across a city with low literacy rates.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Through July and August, the literacy charity&#8217;s Peterborough-based campaign tried to engage children with stories and books.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Several events were held including the Little Stories Festival and the city&#8217;s first summer story hunt where 1,000 vouchers were hidden for children of all ages to find and exchange for a free book at three local libraries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The charity hoped it would help build communication and language skills needed to confidently start school.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The team worked with multiple organisations across the city, including Barnado&#8217;s, Peterborough Family Hubs, Cross Keys Homes and Peterborough Museum to help reach the young children.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Research from the National Literacy Trust states that in the East of England, one in 10 children aged five to eight say they do not have a book of their own at home \u2013 which is equivalent to about three children in every classroom across Peterborough.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Further recent research from the trust found that just one in three (32.7%) children and young people aged eight to 18 said they enjoyed reading &#8220;very much&#8221; or &#8220;quite a lot&#8221; in 2025 \u2013 a slight drop from the previous year, but part of a much longer decline.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"A boy wearing a white T-shirt and black shorts trying to pick up a green voucher placed by the trust by a fence on the ground.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/7ade80446f7c1548ff6637bbe034eacd.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Over 130 families across Peterborough joined the city-wide story-hunt [National Literacy Trust]<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The trust provides children who live in the city with access to books to take home and keep, as well as the freedom to choose what they read.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Five wards in the city were deemed to be in the top 10% of wards in the country with the greatest &#8220;literacy need&#8221;, according to the trust.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Becky Marrs, manager for the National Literacy Trust in Peterborough, said: &#8220;When a child connects with a story, no matter what age they are, it unlocks a world of new possibilities and builds vital reading skills.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;Every story starts somewhere, and we&#8217;re proud to be working across Peterborough to help children in our city get the strongest start possible.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Follow Peterborough news on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sounds\/curation\/p0cjd9zv?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Byahoo.north.america%5D-%5Blink%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:BBC Sounds;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">BBC Sounds<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/bbccambridgeshire\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Facebook;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Facebook<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/bbccambridgeshire\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Instagram;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Instagram<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/BBCcambs\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:X;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">X<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Related internet links<script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The National Literacy Trust has encouraged 1,500 children to read across a city with low literacy rates. Through&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[489,1061,156,22436,111,139,69,22437],"class_list":{"0":"post-21434","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-children","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-national-literacy-trust","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-peterborough-museum"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}