Time to catch up with a book – Premier’s Reading Challenge gets children reading daily

Victorian children and young people are nearly one month into the challenge to read more books as part of the Premiers’ Reading Challenge which launched 18 March, with a theme of ‘Reading: Everybody. Everyday.’ 

James Merlino, Victorian Minister for Education launched the 16th year of the Premiers’ Reading Challenge 2020, with thousands of avid readers expected to take part in schools, early childhood centres and homes across the state.

The Premiers’ Reading Challenge aims to inspire more children to read, helping to build essential literacy skills that support their education. Artwork for this year’s challenge has been designed by Jess McGeachin, whose debut picture book Fly, published in 2019, was shortlisted for the World Illustration awards.

For those children in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings who are not yet reading independently, the Premier has challenged them to ‘read or experience’ 40 books with the help of the caring adults in their lives.

Students in Years 3-10 need to read at least 15 books in the six months from March to September to complete the challenge, and for those in prep to Year 2, the challenge is to read or experience 30 books.

More than 12,000 books feature on the list – 150 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 113,000 students and children from 956 local schools, 1,367 early childhood services and homes across the state completed the Challenge and got lost in the pages of more than 4.3 million books.

Since the challenge began in 2005, more than 3 million students in Victoria have read nearly 50 million books.

More information about the challenge is available here.