The HarperCollins Reading for Pleasure Awards

in partnership with The Open University and UK Literacy Association

Patron: Michael Morpurgo, Children’s Author
Guest judge: Hannah Gold, Children’s Author

The awards are growing!  This year, Farshore are joined by our sister publishers, HarperCollins Children’s Books, Collins and Barrington Stoke.

Together, we want to recognise and celebrate those teachers, schools and educators that successfully promote and encourage children’s reading for pleasure, both within and beyond the school setting.

Enter now for an opportunity to be recognised by experts in children’s reading for pleasure.

Award Categories

• Early Career Teacher (0-3 years in teaching)
• Experienced Teacher (3 years plus)
• Whole School
• School Reading Champion (e.g., Librarians/other educators)
• Community Reading Champion (immediate and/or wider community, from local area to local authority)
• The HarperCollins Author’s Choice Award is chosen by the guest judge as their personal favourite and will win a virtual visit from that author

Past winner, Sonia Thompson, says:
The beauty of taking part in these awards is not only the chance to win £250 worth of books but, and more importantly to me, teachers have the opportunity to leave a legacy of best reading for pleasure practices. That legacy will support other teachers to raise the profile of evidence-informed reading for pleasure, across a range of communities. Now that is certainly worth an entry!

Sonia Thompson
Headteacher/Director
St. Matthew’s C.E. Primary Research and Support School
Birmingham

How to enter:

Submit a research-informed case study on how children have been encouraged to read for pleasure. It’s important to show context and the research that has inspired you.
Show your rationale, aims, outline of what you did, evidence of impact and finally your reflections.
To enter, please download either a PowerPoint or Word template here.

Submission

• The deadline is midnight on Friday 3^rd May 2024.
• The case study should be a minimum of 1000 words, maximum of 1500 words.
• To submit your entry, please ensure it’s marked ‘Submission for HarperCollins RfP award’ and uploaded via Share your practice – Reading for Pleasure (ourfp.org). If you do not already have one, you will be asked to register for a free account as part of the submission process.

Awards

Winners will be announced at the OU/UKLA Reading for Pleasure conference on Saturday 15^th June 2024 in Milton Keynes.
Each category winner will receive for their school:

• Books to the value of £250.
  • Winners can choose the books they want from our extensive range at Farshore, HarperCollins Children’s Books, Collins and Barrington Stoke. 
• 20 copies of Help Your Child Love Reading by Alison David
• Winners also receive a trophy and framed certificate

This Year’s Judges

• Joy Court, Co-founder: All Around Reading
• Teresa Cremin, Professor of Education, The Open University
• Alison David, Consumer Insight Director, Farshore
• Martin Galway, Head of School Programmes, National Literacy Trust
• Cally Poplak, Executive Publisher, HCCB and Farshore
• David Reedy, UK Literacy Association
• Hannah Gold, Children’s Author

Top Tips from the Judges:

• Follow the guidance.
• Don’t go over the word count! Your submission will not be considered if you do.
• Select photos carefully, choosing only those that demonstrate your work.

HarperCollins collaborates with the Open University and the UK Literacy Association, who work together to research the significance of teachers being readers and identify ways to build reciprocal and interactive communities of readers. Both organizations are keen to profile and develop research-informed professional practice in this area. 

Previous Award Winners

Supporters

Thoughts on Reading for Pleasure

Hear from our Patron, bestselling children’s author and the nation’s favourite storyteller, Michael Morpurgo, tell us his Thoughts on Reading for Pleasure.

By Michael Morpurgo, Patron of the HarperCollins Reading for Pleasure Awards

My own journey into reading and into writing has been salutary. It became the foundation of my thinking on matters educational, practical and philosophical, and ultimately it was a journey that led me into becoming a story-maker. It has transformed my life.

I was a lucky child. I had a mother and grandmother, both actors, who loved reading stories to my brother Pieter and me in bed at night. Every story was a lullaby. It’s what stories are for in those early days. For us they were dream-makers, sleep-makers.

Soon I realised that they both loved reading to us as much as we loved listening to them. We knew instinctively, Pieter and I, snuggled together in our bed, that the nightly readings were acts of love. Mother and grandmother were precious to us, so what they read became precious to us. We loved the music in the words, the pace and rhythm in the telling. We loved the excitement, the fun, the joys and sadnesses. They lived all of it as they read, we lived it all of it as we listened. We made the stories together.

School spoilt all that. All too soon books and words became sources of threat and testing and failure and punishment. I no longer enjoyed the stories. We were interrogated about them, and felt stupid if we had understood wrongly. There were spelling tests, punctuation tests, parsing tests, reading out loud tests. Failure felt like disgrace, punishment confirmed it. Humiliation became normal. The joy of stories died, the fun and music of them died. Reading was no longer for pleasure. It was a test. Reading was not for me, it was for the clever people who did well in tests, were never stood in the corner or kept in for detention.

So I left reading behind me, and did what all children do, chose what I could do well. I played football and rugby and cricket. I could do that, quite welI. I had fun.

And then I got lucky again. In every school I had at least one teacher or librarian who did not give up on me, one who read poetry and novels out loud with that same passion for story and work and rhythm I remembered from my infancy. The spark was still there, these teachers kept it alive, in university too. What my mother had done for me with The Elephants Child from the Just so Stories when I was 5, a professor at Kings London did for me by sitting on the corner of his desk and reading Beowulf, with total passion. The spark had become a flame, stories were immersive again, transporting, sheer joy.

I found myself a young teacher in a Year Six class at Wickhambreaux Primary School, a teacher desperate to find a way engage young children with stories. Encouraged by an inspiring Headteacher, who had decided to focus on storytelling as the way for all teachers and children to end the day, I entered more than willingly into this initiative.

I had many mentors to follow, all those who had read to me the way they had at home, at school, at university. I knew I must read to the children in my class only the books and poems I loved, read them with total commitment, and never start interrogating them afterwards. After the end of school bell rang I would send them away with the story still in their heads, and longing to hear more the next day. And when I ran out of books I loved, I began to make my own stories, and dared one day to go in and tell them one, tell it fresh from the heart, bringing it alive to me, alive to them. Well, it worked with them as well as it had worked for me. Still does. I’m still reading and loving it, still writing and loving it.

So of course I am a huge supporter of Farshore’s drive to encourage reading for pleasure. I may be a Patron of this great initiative, but I am not the only one. There are parents, grandparents, teachers, librarians, storytellers and writers, thousands upon thousands of them, who know as I do that if a child enjoys stories early in life, that child is likely to become a reader for life, with all that that means. We know that stories open the doors to understanding and knowledge and empathy.

I’ve never been good at endings. So I want Farshore themselves – it is their initiative after all – to end this. They have gone out and done the research, and have set up the Reading for Pleasure Awards. My experience as a child, and as a parent and a teacher may be mine, may be anecdotal. But Farshore have done the research, and are now drawing greater attention to this whole issue by creating these awards. When research and anecdote chime in harmony, then we know we’re onto something.

Read what Farshore says below, and enjoy it!

Our research has found many children don’t think of reading as something they could enjoy. Instead they think of it a subject to learn, tests, something you can get wrong or do badly in. Our ‘Stories and Choices’ project among 7-11 years olds in one single form entry primary school found that when teachers read aloud to children, often and with no learning expectations, children were enthused about books and were motivated to read more themselves. We also found their comprehension levels increased at twice the expected rate over the period of the study. We’re currently (January to Easter 2023) running ‘Storytime in School’, a similar project but on a much larger scale (20 schools and 3000 children) to test the hypothesis once more.  However, reading aloud to children is just one strategy and there are many more that are used with great success in the school environment. The Farshore Reading for Pleasure Awards are a way to recognise, celebrate and share the creativity, strategies and sheer excellence found among Teachers, Librarians and educators who encourage children to read for enjoyment.

The Reading for Pleasure Awards 2023 winners were:

• Early Career – WINNER: Janay Brazier, Braiswick Primary School, Colchester
• Experienced Teacher – WINNER: Katy Bland, Spotland Primary School, Rochdale
• School Reading Champion – WINNER: Kiran Satti, Wallbrook Primary Academy, Coseley
• Whole School – JOINT WINNERS: Warren Primary Academy, Nottingham and Grove Road Community Primary School, Harrogate
• Author’s Choice – WINNER Kiran Satti, Wallbrook Primary Academy, Coseley

The Reading for Pleasure Awards 2022 winners were:

• Community Reading Champion Award – Amanda Hanton, Leicestershire County Council Virtual school
• School Reading Champion Award – Lucas Maxwell, Glenthorne High School, Sutton
• Experienced Teacher Award – Amy Greatrex, South Wilford Endowed C of E Primary School, Nottingham
• Whole School Award – Georgie Lax, Starcross Primary School, Devon and Claire Nelson, Cheadle Catholic Infant School, Cheadle

The Reading for Pleasure Awards 2022 Highly Commended were:

• Experienced Teacher Award Highly Commended – Sarah Bell, The Holt Primary School, Skellingthorpe, Lincoln

The Reading for Pleasure Awards 2021 winners were:

• Early Career Teacher Award – Phoebe Lawton, The Wilmslow Academy, Cheshire
• Experienced Teacher Award – Georgie Lax, Starcross Primary School, Devon
• Whole School Award – Jon Biddle, Moorlands Church of England Primary Academy, Great Yarmouth and Laura Atkinson, Lapal Primary School, West Midlands
• School Reading Champion Award – Jenny Holder, Liverpool Learning Partnership, Liverpool and Jill Queen, Netherburn Primary School, South Lancashire

The Reading for Pleasure Awards 2021 Highly Commended were:

• Experienced Teacher Award Highly Commended – Mary Jenkinson, St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, South Yorkshire and Cathie Whiting, Deb Johnson and Sharon Ealing, Coleshill Heath School, Birmingham
• Whole School Award Highly Commended – Craig Clarke, Lea Forest Primary Academy, Birmingham

The Reading for Pleasure Awards 2020 winners were:

• Whole School Award – Sayes Court Primary and Nursery School, Addlestone
• Experienced Teacher Award – Eve Vollans, Mayflower Community Academy, Plymouth
• Early Career Teacher Award – Nigel Lungenmuss-Ward, St Marys CofE Academy, Bury Saint Edmunds
• School Reading Champion Award – Carol Carter, Headlands Primary School, Northampton

The Reading for Pleasure Awards 2019 winners were:

• Whole School Award – Jointly awarded to Elmhurst Primary, London, and Sneinton Primary, Nottingham.
• Experienced Teacher Award – Sadie Phillips, Canary Wharf College, London
• Early Career Teacher Award – Marianne Mitchell, Christ Church C of E Primary, Hertfordshire

The Reading for Pleasure Awards 2018 winners were:

• Whole School Award – St Matthew’s C of E Primary School, Birmingham 
• Experienced Teacher Award – Jon Biddle, Moorlands Primary Academy, Belton, Norfolk
• Early Career Teacher Award – Emily Crumbleholme, Peover Superior Primary School, Knutsford