Three Months In: TACT’s National Year of Reading
TACT are proud to be a part of the National Year of Reading 2026, which aims to make lasting change to the reading habits of the nation and promote a love of reading in children and young people. Over the past three months, TACT’s dedicated Education Service have worked extremely hard to make this campaign engaging and exciting. This is the story so far…
To connect our fostering households to the campaign, we chose to send monthly internal newsletters called ‘Bookworm Bulletins’. These were key to informing our fostering families about upcoming activities, along with providing resources and recommendations.
Meet the author events
One of the highlights of the first three months of the campaign was the Meet the Author event with Nick Sharratt, illustrator of the famous Story of Tracy Beaker books. This was attended by 12 children and young people as well as their carers and some TACT staff members. The session was lively, engaging, and brought a great deal of joy to the children – who also had very thoughtful and enthusiastic questions which contributed to a fantastic atmosphere.
A foster carer who joined the session with a young person in their care immediately noticed a positive change: “He has loved learning to draw – and sessions like this have been incredible for his development and his confidence. He now loves drawing and is now proud of all his work”. A particular highlight involved a young person who joined the event remotely from his hospital bed – and enjoyed it so much that their carer’s Supervising Social Worker has arranged online drawing classes for him while he remains in hospital.
Several of our Supervising Social Workers have been in touch with our Education Team regarding routes into publishing, work experience, and funding for aspiration opportunities – which shows the clear impact of the event in inspiring young people to consider creative career pathways or side projects.
Monthly Challenges
Every month a challenge was set for our children and young people – with every entry receiving a £10 book voucher.
There were ten entries to our challenges between January and March – with every person entering being placed into a draw to win their choice of Kindle, Tonie Box, or Audible Subscription. So far the challenges have been to write a review for a favourite book, draw an illustration of a favourite character and write a job application for a fictional character. Some of the amazing entries can be seen below:
Free Books for Children
As part of the campaign, and to encourage children to read more, our Education Team offered free books to all children and young people each month based on that month’s book recommendations in our Bookworm Bulletins. So far we’ve had 22 books requested – as well as seven by Nick Sharratt since his event. Below is an example of some of the books that have been sent out to our young people:
Other activities and Moving forward
Every week different TACT staff members and trustees recorded themselves reading different children’s story books – as well as chapters from the novel ‘The boy at the back of the class’.
In collaboration with BookTrust, our Education Team funded ‘Story Explorers’ every month; a book subscription service for children aged 1-4 that embeds sharing stories at home to strengthen bonding and attachment for foster families. So far 27 of our children have accessed the Story Explorers service.
Looking to the next three months, one of the most exciting activities is the next Meet the Author event which is with Andy Stanton – author of the brilliantly funny Mr Gum series. TACT Children and young people will be welcome to join and we are expecting it to be just as exciting and engaging as the last event!
The upcoming themes of our Bookworm Bulletins include children’s classics, with challenges to invent a ridiculous character and write a paragraph introducing them. This will be followed by conducting an interview with an adult about the books they enjoyed reading as a child.
We look forward to seeing how the campaign continues – with more of our children and young people sharing their love of reading with us, or discovering it as a new passion!
A big thank you to our wonderful Education Service for, once again, going above and beyond to truly enrich our children’s education with a passion for reading!