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At world famous toy store, Hamleys, former Blue Peter presenter Matt Baker, helped launch the Nobby Travels National Children’s Book Review competition.  The competition, which is the brainchild of husband & wife authors Darren & Julia Spence, has been designed to get kids reading by encouraging them to write a review of their favourite book.  With prizes of up to £1,000 up for grabs, schools up and down the country are expected to participate.  Despite this, and the competition’s relevance to the Government’s “Year of Reading” initiative, the Government snubbed the launch, bringing into question their commitment to improve literacy throughout the UK.  Darren Spence, the competitions co-creator and co-author of Nobby Travels said last night that “in order to get the Government’s attention, he would dress up as a dog and walk through parliament howling like the main character in their children’s books, Nobby Travels.”

Forming part of the Government’s “National Year of Reading”, the competition invites every UK primary child aged 5-11 years old to read any book they wish – and write a review of it.  During the launch Darren & Julia asked teachers & parents to support the campaign by encouraging children to participate.

The campaign, which is being run in association with Headteacher Update magazine will run until 17th May.  On 20th June the best 40 reviews (20 per age group) will be shortlisted and the public will then be able to vote for the ones they think are best, with the winners being announced on 1st July.  The winners will receive a range of prizes consisting of family days out, book tokens, cinema tickets and iPOD vouchers.  The schools who teach the winning children will also pick up a cheque of £1,000.  Full details about the campaign will be available after 21st February 2008 on the official competition website, www.nobbytravels.com/Bookreview.

Nobby Travels was made famous by Darren in October 2007 when he appeared on the popular BBC entrepreneurs show, Dragons’ Den.  Since appearing on the show, the couple have had a very successful time, and on 18th January 2008 found out that their publishing company, Weird Grape Ltd, had been shortlisted to win the most “Innovative Publisher of the Year” award by the Independent Publishers Guild (IPG).  The IPG were particularly impressed with the efforts the couple had gone to to work effectively with the Primary School network and considered their approach very original.  The winner will be announced on 8th March 2008.

During the launch, Darren explained that since launching Nobby Travels last November and speaking to a number of teachers, parents and children about reading the couple wanted to do something quite special to encourage more children to read and felt a National Children’s Book Review competition was the best way to motivate schools and encourage parents to put reading back at the top of their agenda.  He reiterated how important reading is and said that although the competition will help raise the profile of reading and start a wider debate, we need to be thinking of new ways to make reading more interesting and accessible for children.  He continued by saying teachers, parents and publishers all need to embrace the new technological advances and integrate them into a reading environment.

Entry forms for the 2008 Nobby Travels Children’s Book Review competition are available to download from www.nobbytravels.com/Bookreview.  Details can also be found in the Feb/March edition of Headteacher Update

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