How well do you know Bookstart?
Bookstart is the national early years programme, from BookTrust, all about promoting shared reading in the home.
At BookTrust we recognise that reading together early in life helps nurture a love of books and stories. It also builds critical connections between children and their parents/carers. This is important for all children, especially those from low-income families or vulnerable backgrounds. Bookstart is how we prioritise this: our programmes help children access the transformative benefits of shared reading.
The fundamentals of Bookstart
Bookstart programmes comprise a series of reading interventions dedicated to help families embed shared reading into their daily lives. Our programmes support all stages of early years development.
The Bookstart Baby, Toddler and Pre-schooler programmes combine:
- high quality, interactive and developmentally appropriate books
- reading activities
- information for parents with confidence building messages and support from early years partners
- physical and digital resources and support for our partners.
We have been delivering Bookstart in partnership with our local early years partners for over 30 years. Partners include family hubs, health visitors, early years settings, childminders, schools, libraries and community groups. Partners tailor the programmes to meet the specific needs of the families in their communities.
Engaging with families
Our research with families indicates that many parents and carers understand how important it is to share books with their children: they want their children to spend more time with books. However, many families face challenges, such as time pressures or a lack of confidence. This can make it hard to embed shared reading into everyday family life. Bookstart is there to address these challenges.
We deliver Bookstart programmes in every community, in all the local authorities in England and across Wales and Northern Ireland. We have an established network of over 27,000 early years partners. Our partners start by engaging families in their settings or in families’ homes using 1:1 and group interactions. They use our programmes and resources to start conversations with families about reading and books and model how to use our resources.
Partners share the benefits of reading, emphasising how to develop meaningful interactions with children. They give our carefully curated books and resources to each family so that they have them at home to use with their children.
Taking the fun of books home
Here you can see the joy of bringing Bookstart to one of our settings, Brookfield Children’s Centre, Rotherham. A short film clip shows what it is like to introduce Bookstart, and the pleasure it brings to the children and their families.
As Alison Scholes, Outreach and Engagement Worker, says,
“It’s important for us to engage families with Bookstart packs so we’ve got something visual to give them. We’re not just telling them to go off and read to their children. We’re giving them a resource to say: “You can read this with your child; they’ll really like it – and here are the benefits they’ll get out of it.”
Whether it’s through bringing stories to life during a storytelling session or setting aside time to sit with a family and explore a pack together, our work helps strengthen families’ connection to reading.
Bookstart resources, along with support from our partners, empower families to embed reading into their daily lives. They help build parents’ and carers’ confidence and motivation to read with their child. The packs are a valuable resource to support families who may have limited reading resources at home.
What is our work based on?
An extensive body of evidence demonstrates the transformative benefits of sharing books and stories with babies and young children.
Shared reading helps to:
- build children’s language and communication skills
- support school readiness including cognitive, social and emotional development
- create positive learning experiences that can buffer the impacts of disadvantage.
- boost parental warmth and responsiveness
This evidence is the foundation of our work at BookTrust. International evidence from OECD, for example, suggests that being read to in early childhood is associated with improved reading enjoyment and performance in adolescence, regardless of socio-economic background.
Finally …
Our Bookstart programmes bring this evidence to life by helping families share books from the very beginning. Our evaluation indicates that families really enjoy engaging with these programmes and that they are making a difference to how families read together.
These voices testify to that:
“When they were doing it, I was thinking; ‘please have a copy of that book in my pack!’ He really does like that book. I think I can certainly adapt reading to make it more interactive for him.” Jesse, after a Bookstart session with her son.
“We know that creating a special gifting moment is what can make reading and storytelling really interactive and more enjoyable for children.” Shauni Sanderson, Partnership Manager for BookTrust in the North.
Want to know more?
- For information on Bookstart programmes, and to discuss ways of working with BookTrust contact: [email protected] or go to www.booktrust.org.uk
- Look out for the next steps of the Reading Right’s campaign – delivered in partnership Between BookTrust and Frank Cottrell-Boyce (Waterstones Children’s Laureate) and for BookTrust’s 'Trends, drivers and inequalities in UK childhood reading' (due out in May 2026).