Schools | Starlight Books

Working with Schools

There are several different ways that Starlight Books can work with schools, including:

Supporting with World Book Day, including potentially supplying the World Book Day books for children to exchange their vouchers for.
Advising on latest releases that you may want to add to your library.
Planning and launching a reading challenge for the pupils.
Attending school events (such as fayres, Christmas parties, etc) and/or end of term celebrations (to help children continue with their reading over the school holidays).
Organising a book fair.
Providing books for prize giving or awards, with personalised book plates.
Helping to organise author visits for pupils.

World Book Day

World Book Day is the first Thursday of March each year and is a wonderful opportunity to promote reading within your school.

There are several ways that Starlight Books can help:

Supporting the planning of World Book Day events, including recommending books that you may want to feature to tempt children to pick up something new.
Supplying the books and setting up a "World Book Day Fair" where the children can come and exchange their vouchers. This can remove the main barrier to children receiving their book (a adult in their life who is able to take them to a bookshop to pick out their book). Please note: if you are interested in this support, please reach out as soon as possible, the orders with the publishers for World Book Day books open around 8 months before World Book Day, so the earlier we discuss this the better!

Advising on Latest Releases

There are more children's books released than anyone could possible read - particularly teachers with a full workload already. Starlight Books can help alleviate some of that pressure by coming to your school to discuss new releases and what children are currently reading. We can also help source books that support your key curriculum topics (when my daughter's school covered the sinking of The Titanic, she immediately wanted to know more than I could tell her - so we found some books to expand our knowledge).

I'm not naïve to the financial pressures that schools are under so, depending on how many books are needed, we can discuss pricing for books you want to add to your library but I can also work with staff and the PTFA to organise a "Sponsor a Book" event for the school where families, grandparents, members of the local community and anyone else connected to the school can sponsor a book to be added to the school library.

Reading Challenges

It's a truth universally acknowledged that children love a game or competition, so Starlight Books can help you set up a reading challenge that is suitable for your school and the pupils you serve. I have templates for a few different styles, including:

Challenges to expand their knowledge of the curriculum (for example: read a fiction book of someone living during World War 2; read a non-fiction book written by someone from another country).
A "Pick Your Own" challenge where it can be adapted to really challenge every child - for some children reading a page a day is a real challenge, but for some it would be more challenging to reading a book outside their comfort zone.

We could also set up a reading challenge for your staff or the parents - one of the best ways to get children to read is for them to see adults reading!

Attending School Events

As Starlight Books is a bookshop in a van, it can travel to any events that you are organising. Including summer fayres, winter/Christmas events and even end of term celebrations (to encourage children to keep reading over the school holidays.

Depending on the event, we can discuss running a story time session (usually aimed at KS1 - but all are welcome).

Book Fairs

Many of us remember with huge fondness the excitement of school book fairs. The new books, the decisions about what we will spend our precious money on, the negotiation with friends of which book they will get and can we borrow it after they have read it.

For book fairs with Starlight Books, there are a couple of things we can do wonderfully:

The shop can come for a day, or a number of days around your school schedule - for example it can be every Tuesday for a term (where each class gets to visit on a particular day - building the excitement in the school).
We can work together on how the books will be paid for - if you are worried about children having cash in school, then we can talk about other options.
The stock of the shop can be tailored to your school - I can pick out books to support curriculum topics and remove anything that isn't a book (like stationery, stickers and games) so that the children focus on the books.

Prize Givings

Where schools have prize giving or rewards for achievements, Starlight Books can come for a special event where the recipient is given a voucher for a single book (up to a price agreed with you) and they are then free to shop and pick out something they are excited by. This has a couple of advantages over gifting a book voucher:

The child can pick the book straight away, rather than having a book voucher that might sit forgotten in a drawer without an adult to take them to the book shop.
We can work on some personalised book plates that can be added straight away to the child's book and can even include a personalised message from their teacher.
I can remove any books from the shop that are over the price agreed with you - so the child has free range (so no "I really like this one but it's more than my voucher").
You will only be charged for the books that are bought - for example: rather than giving 30 children £10 book tokens each (£300), you will pay for 30 books under £10 each which will likely work out cheaper (obviously depending on what books the children choose from the under £10 selection).

Author Visits

There are many many fantastic authors in the South West who have written wonderful children's books. Every time I meet one, they offer to visit any schools I work with and so I have a growing list of authors we can arrange visits with. I can handle everything from liaising with them, to help transporting them to the school, to setting up a book order page for children who are keen to buy the book and want to have it signed.