A Snapshot of Wirral's Reading Year
Wirral don't have a post specifically dedicated to reader development, but over the past few years, with the commitment of an enthusiastic workforce, we've more than made up for that fact.
Each year starts inevitably with the mass panic of planning for World Book Day. This year saw Zimbabwean storyteller Love Phiri, musically accompanied by Dave Ward from the Windows Project, holding sessions for schoolchildren in WH Smith Birkenhead (see photo), events and coffee mornings across all libraries, displays of staff all time favourite books and outreach teams in local shopping centres and leisure facilities.
Next comes our annual Orange Prize Party in June. Last year over 65 people attended Bromborough Library to celebrate the event, with reading groups from all over Wirral gathered together to make their choice from the shortlist from Wirral and also to vote for their lemon! This year's event is at Upton Library on June 6th.
October sees National Poetry Day and this year we'll have poet John Siddique visiting Wallasey Central Library on October 2nd as part of his "From One Reader to Another" tour.
Finally, every December sees our Xmas Readers Event, where everybody and anybody who loves reading is invited to an evening of food, drink, discussion and fun (not necessarily in that order!).
Wirral have also had considerable ongoing success through being key partners in the "Get into Reading" project with the University of Liverpool, with groups meeting in several libraries. The project aims to bring people together over a book. At the sessions, people listen to short stories, poems or novels read aloud by a group facilitator and join in a formal discussion which can be light and funny or address serious problems depending on the group, the reading and the moment. Evidence has shown that group members, many of whom weren't previously library users, were now visiting libraries regularly.
Finally, Wirral Libraries are proud of the fact that we now have 35 thriving reading groups, including some teenage and junior ones, meeting regularly across the majority of our 24 libraries. We're not here to preach about reading "better books', but to help all our readers "better enjoy" whatever they choose to read.
For more information about Wirral's reading activities please contact Paul Irons tel: 0151 630 2334 email: paulirons@wirral-libraries.net
