Sport is to be the focus of this year's Summer Reading Challenge, the annual library initiative to encourage children to read six books during their summer holidays. The Challenge will be called Team Read, and its sport theme will tie in with the National Year of Reading's focus for August.

Team Read will be supported by an...

Schools secretary Ed Balls will formally launch the National Year of Reading today (1st April). To aid the launch, the NYR will run a TV advert starring celebrities including Geri Halliwell, Lenny Henry, Bill Bailey, Jon Culshaw and Jo Brand (pictured). The advert, which will air for the first time on Tuesday evening, aims to "broaden the...

Authors are being asked to visit locations from prisons to garden centres as part of a new initiative from the National Year of Reading, the "Author Challenge".

The NYR is calling on all authors to commit to doing three new things during the course of the year to promote and celebrate reading. Suggested activities include...

At a Downing Street launch for the National Year of Reading this morning (Tuesday, 8th January), Prime Minister Gordon Brown declared literacy "one of the best anti-poverty, deprivation and crime policies we can think of". The event saw Brown lay out his ambitions for a year which would "make thousands who can't read able to...