Victorian preschoolers encouraged to hit the books

The Victorian Premiers’ Reading Challenge kicks off today, with children and young people from schools, early learning centres and homes across the state encouraged to take part.

Now in its 15th year, the Premiers’ Reading Challenge continues to inspire more children to read, helping to build essential literacy skills that support their education, with thousands of children and young people expected to take part.

The theme for the 2019 early years challenge is ‘Spark their Imagination’, with Melbourne-based children’s illustrator, Adele Thomas, also designing posters for primary school-aged children, on the theme of ‘Reach new heights’.

For children in years 3 to 10, at least 15 books must be read in the six months from February to September to complete the challenge. For students from Prep – Year 2, the challenge is to read or experience 30 books, and for children in the years before school, the challenge is to read or experience 40 books with the help of their families as part of the Premiers’ Reading Challenge for the Early Years.

More than 12,000 books feature on the list – 200 of them new. Children can read picture books, short stories, poems or non-fiction books in any language as part of the Challenge.

Last year, 266,950 participants in 965 local schools, 1,947 early childhood services and homes across the state got lost in the pages of more than 4.4 million books. Since the Challenge began in 2005, more than 2.8 million students in Victoria have read nearly 49 million books.

Victorian Minister for Education James Merlino wished participants luck, saying “I hope that you find adventure on every page.”