Nursery Rhymes hit the Bookstart Big Time

Bookstart today announces details for National Bookstart Day 2009 which will be held this year on Friday 9 October, the Friday of Children’s Book Week

The theme of this year’s National Bookstart Day is My Favorite Rhyme.
To celebrate, Bookstart is launching a nationwide search to find the nation’s favourite rhyme.
Who will win in the contest to be named the nation’s favourite nursery rhyme? Will Little Miss Muffet be successful in her battle with Old Mother Hubbard? Can Incey Wincey Spider climb up to poll position? Or will the Grand Old Duke of York march his armies to victory? 

Bookstart will reveal the results in time for National Bookstart Day.
One million books of the nation’s top eight rhymes will be produced in celebration of Bookstart, which gives free books to every child in the UK. The books, posters, bookmarks and stickers have been designed by the award-winning illustrator Sebastien Braun (Boxer Books).  Thousands of families from across the UK will be invited to take part in a range of activities in bookshops, libraries and a range of venues, to highlight the fun of book-sharing. These will include rhyme times, appearances from the Bookstart Bear, nursery-rhyme themed adventures as well as song and story telling sessions.

Borders, Waterstones and independent bookshops across the country will be running nursery rhyme-themed events in support and celebration of National Bookstart Day.
Rosemary Clarke, Director of Bookgifting, Booktrust: “National Bookstart Day reminds people that reading books with your child is one of the nicest activities you can share. Bookstart aims to give every child a love of books, no matter how young they are. This year’s National Bookstart Day celebrates the nation’s favorite rhymes, as rhymes are a great way to involve all the family in songs and stories and a wonderful way to get children excited about books.” 

Professor Peter Bryant, Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Education, University of Oxford: “Encouraging young children to enjoy and remember nursery rhymes is a good way to prepare them for reading and writing. Our research has shown a clear relationship between how well children know nursery rhymes before they go to school and the progress that they make later on when learning to read and to spell. Children learn a lot about rhyming sounds through nursery rhymes and this eventually helps them when they learn how alphabetic letters represent spoken sounds.”

Christina Christou, mother to Elias, 10, Delphine, 5, and Lila, 10 months:
“The Bookstart bag is explored by all the children in our house and it’s lovely to see baby Lila’s eyes following the bright illustrations and her baby babbles as she recognises images from her favourites! They are a brilliant addition to any books you may have and we all look forward to huddling up together at bedtime for a stack of stories. We take it in turns to read out parts and love guessing what will happen over the page.”

The website www.bookstart.org.uk enables parents to enter their postcode to look up National Bookstart Day events taking place in their area.