Thousands of children from all over the country took part in the summer reading challenge in 2023. The theme was ‘Ready, Set, Read!’.
In Wales, The Reading Agency and public libraries succeeded in reaching 39,593 children during the school summer holidays as part of the annual challenge which is endorsed by parents, teachers, the Books Council of Wales and the Welsh Government.
With increasing pressures on public libraries in terms of staffing and resources, it’s encouraging that libraries can still help so many children to keep up with their reading during the holidays, with 50% going on to complete the challenge of reading six or more books.
Here are the figures for 2023 in a nice tidy list!
- 39,593 children across Wales took part
- 3,254 of these were under 3 years old and took part using specially designed resources for pre-school
- 28,913 children aged 4–11 took part by visiting their local library (10% of children aged 4–11 in Wales)
- 19,652 children completed the challenge by reading at least 6 library books (50%)
- 4,670 children joined the library as new members
- 45,050 attended various events at libraries
