Tonies has donated Tonieboxes and Tonies to Cressida Cowell MBE’s flagship project as Waterstones Children’s Laureate 2019-2022.
Life-changing Libraries is designed to showcase the transformative impact a well-resourced primary school library has on a child’s opportunities in life, alongside the vast inequality currently facing children across England. The project was announced in April alongside an open letter from Cressida Cowell to Boris Johnson, calling for the Government to help reverse inequality in education. The letter can be seen here.
Following this, six primary schools across England over the course of the year will be helped to develop a reading for pleasure culture, with the support of BookTrust. Each school will have a dedicated library stocked with Tonieboxes and 1000 titles selected by BookTrust’s expert team with guidance from the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) and donated by publishers.
The Tonieboxes will allow children in the six schools taking part in Life-changing Libraries to enjoy stories in audio, such as Elmer and Peter Rabbit.
Pinky Laing, UK partnerships at Tonies, commented: “Tonies is committed to helping children through the power and magic of storytelling and we are delighted to help support Waterstones Children’s Laureate Cressida Cowell and BookTrust with such an important education project for England’s most underprivileged communities.
“At Tonies we believe in education. Our audio storytelling devices help to engage young minds, and we feel fortunate that we can help inspire the next generation to learn and develop their literacy skills. The donation to the project is one of many moves that our company will be making over the next year to help children’s development and learning. We will also be launching an education page for schools on our website next month as part of our efforts to further improve education and learning within schools.”
Diana Gerald, CEO at BookTrust, added: “It is impossible to overstate the life-changing impact that stories have on a child’s life prospects, their mental health, wellbeing, self-esteem, educational achievement and so much more. Stories open up a world of new possibilities for children and develops aspiration, with research showing that it can drive social mobility and mitigate the effect of social inequality.
“As custodians of the prestigious Waterstone Children’s Laureate role, BookTrust is delighted to be supporting Cressida’s ‘Life-changing Libraries’ initiative, and helping develop new library spaces that inspire a long-standing reading for pleasure culture within these six selected schools.”
For further details on Waterstone Children’s Laureate Cressida Cowell’s ‘Life-changing Libraries’ initiative, please visit www.booktrust.org.uk/lifechanginglibraries and to search and support the campaign on social media, please follow #LifeChangingLibraries.
