About OwnBooks
OWN BOOKS is an innovative book recycling project to help children have their own books at home.
What is the aim of OwnBooks?
1 Encourage young children to develop an early love of books and reading through choosing and keeping their own books at home
2 Encourage children to select books to take home when it suits them
3 Avoid the need to buy or obligation to return the books
4 Remove any stress and financial constraints on parents over acquisition of books
5 Encourage parents to read with their children at home
What We Do
OWN BOOKS Is a child centred project aiming to give away many free books to children of all backgrounds and ages, without any discrimination. We believe passionately in children having books at home, sharing and enjoying them with their siblings and families.
Children and teens can choose from a wide variety of our books in participating Primary schools, and Secondary schools, and young children can choose OWN BOOKS to take home and keep, with help from parents, from participating Preschools, Nurseries, Parenting Centres, Play Groups, and Early Years Settings.
The Passion
Additional Information
HOW IT BEGAN
Julie de Bastion founded OWN BOOKS in 2014 while assisting with voluntary reading in her local primary school, discovered that some of the young children did not possess books at home. She asked local charity shops for any children’s books they could give her, and securing a regular supply of books, and with the School’s enthusiastic response, set up this new idea of giving away books for free, and for the children to take home and keep if they wished.
ENTHUSIASM FOR OWN BOOKS
The children’s responses to this scheme were, needless to say highly enthusiastic.
After presenting a brief ASSEMBLY INTRODUCTORY TALK and displaying the books, the children were eager to have them. They were completely amazed to discover, that they could just take the books home to keep and not have to bring them back. This is what makes the scheme different from library books.
Julie emphasises that this is a CHILD CENTRED PROJECT and encourages the school to select two older children to become OWN BOOKS MONITORS so children can claim ownership of the scheme, sorting books, labelling them with the OWN BOOKS stickers and organising and displaying the OWN BOOKS BOOKSHELF as they like.
