One of the healthier side-effects of the recent lock-down and on-going social-distancing restrictions has been an increase in home reading; with a recent survey suggesting that 41% of adults reported spending more time reading than previously. Of these, half said they were reading more, simply because they had more time on their hands, whilst another sizeable proportion said they were reading more with their children. Not unsurprisingly, perhaps, many respondents reported re-reading books they already had in their possession – as venturing out for new ones wasn’t always possible. It is with this in mind that Woodham Academy has introduced a ‘mobile library’ service for those students currently unable to attend school in person.
The novel idea, the brainchild of Woodham’s Reading Team, has been some time in the making, because they first had to manually digitise their entire stock (3,000 books, and counting), before learners could search for their favourite titles, authors and genres, etc. and have them delivered safely to their doors. Miss Thomas, an English teacher who is in charge of literacy at Woodham Academy, says the delivery service is an extension of the school’s established reading ethos, and will help ensure pre-teens and teenagers continue to enjoy reading throughout their secondary education.
So, what are our younger-generation of book-worms reading, exactly? Well, whereas, booksellers in general have reported a sharp rise in sales of ‘comfort reading’ titles, such as crime fiction, school-students nationally are bucking the trend, and are continuing to devour ‘dystopian’ fiction in large quantities, with series like The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner and Divergent still topping the charts, alongside the usual cast of wizards, ghouls, vampires and zombies. The Reading Team, however, always remain hopeful their readers will turn over a new page, and so have large amounts of classics and modern classics in stock, which they are always eager to lend to their readership.
