If you are amongst the many Donegal people who feel they don’t do enough reading with their children, then this is your chance.
Easons in Letterkenny will host a ‘Get Into Reading’ session at their shop in the Courtyard Shopping Centre on Saturday morning at 11am.
The very relaxed setting will simply allow children to come along and listen to a story being told.
The aim of the ‘Get Into Reading’ sessions is to allow children to see how much fun reading can be.
The book which will be read during this session is the brilliant Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers.
And just to get children into the mood, there will be balloons and treats given out!
The overall ‘Get Into Reading’ campaign is in response to eye-opening results from a major survey on the nation’s reading habits.
Easons are aiming to both promote reading to young children and encourage adults to reappraise their love of reading.
To achieve this, they’re focusing on two central initiatives:
1. Online Pledge Form
They’re asking everybody who believes in this cause to pledge their support online at www.easons.com/getintoreading. For every thousand names pledged, they’ll give an exclusive hamper of Eason Story Time books to a primary school chosen by a pledger! Plus – everyone who pledges can enter a weekly draw for a €500 Eason gift voucher.
2. Eason Story Time
Each Saturday at 11am in every Eason store in the country, they’ll read a specially selected children’s book to children and adults alike, so thousands of people can enjoy the same book at the same time in over 60 different locations!
And this week Easons in Letterkenny will take centre stage with Lost and Found.
So what is Lost and Found about? What is a boy to do when a lost penguin shows up at his door? Find out where it comes from, of course, and return it. But the journey to the South Pole is long and difficult in the boy’s rowboat. There are storms to brave and deep, dark nights.To pass the time, the boy tells the penguin stories. Finally, they arrive. Yet instead of being happy, both are sad. That’s when the boy realizes: The penguin hadn’t been lost, it had merely been lonely!
Among the most striking results from the survey carried out by Amarach*, commissioned by Eason in December 2011, were the following:
Almost one in five (18%) Irish parents of children under the age of 8 never read to their children.
Over two-thirds (68%) of Irish people believe that a favourite book can tell a lot about someone’s personality and a similar proportion (69%) perceive a well-read person to be intelligent.
One-third (32%) cite time pressures as the main preventative to reading more to their child and 40% have given this as an excuse in telling a child that they cannot read to them.
Four-in-five (84%) Irish people were encouraged to read by their parents and almost 7-in-10 members of the Irish public (69%) were read to as a child.
A quarter of the Irish public reads for five or more hours each week and those who were read to as a child are 30% more likely to spend 5 or more hours a week reading than those who were not read to as a child.
The internet outranks books in a preference to what to do with their spare time (43% read books, 52% surf the internet).
A quarter of the Irish public reads for five or more hours each week and those who were read to as a child are 30% more likely to spend 5 or more hours a week reading than those who were not read to as a child.
(All results from this survey commissioned by Eason reflect a recent OECD** report into the role of parents in a child’s education using the results of a survey of 28million 15 year olds through 74 countries. Among the many results that make up the report, it was clear that the regular reading to young children benefited their development.)
How Can You Get Into Reading?
Pledge your support; tell your friends; spread the word; attend Story Time in your local Eason store; read some books; read to a child; get a child to read to you; encourage your friends and family to read more often; take time to read; make time to read; get lost in a book, find your way back out and get lost in another… there are tons of ways to Get Into Reading.
