Scottish Book Trust launch online celebrations for Bookbug Week

Scottish Book Trust, the national charity changing lives through reading and writing, will host online celebrations this May for Bookbug Week.

Scottish Book Trust, the national charity changing lives through reading and writing, will host online celebrations this year for Bookbug Week, which runs from Monday 18 May – Sunday 24 May.

As the Bookbug programme has been running since 2010, the charity will mark the ten year milestone with #HappyBirthdayBookbug, encouraging families across Scotland to send Bookbug their birthday wishes.

Bookbug Week is an annual celebration of Scotland’s national book-gifting programme and Song and Rhyme Sessions. There will be many ways for families to join in the fun at home, such as a daily drawalong with Bookbug's creator Debi Gliori, to learn how to draw Bookbug and friends. There will also be a special film with Debi, which explains how she created Bookbug ten years ago.

The popular live Bookbug Session on Facebook will run on Friday 22 May at 10am, for everyone to join in and sing happy birthday to Bookbug. The first live Bookbug Session was a great success with over 20,000 views. For those that cannot join the live session, there will be an option to watch later, or the option of acelebratory Bookbug Session for families to try at home themselves.

Scottish Book Trust’s home activities hub will be packed with more themed ideas to try at home, from making a party hat to colouring in sheets of Bookbug. All through the week, there will also be competitions on the charity’s website and social media. Scottish Book Trust will also be asking for families' memories of their child's Bookbug Bags and Bookbug Sessions with their little ones.

As always, families can access Bookbug’s Song and Rhyme library, via Scottish Book Trust’s website, or on the free Bookbug app. Building on the increasing demand for modern nursery rhymes, Scottish Book Trust commissioned Sprog Rock to develop a brand new birthday song, which will launch on Wednesday 20 May. The new song was created through interactive nursery workshops earlier this year with Bucklyvie Nursery in Glasgow. The song centres around the theme of being ten years old, with nursery children contributing their imaginative thoughts about what that age means to them.

Minister for Children and Young People, Maree Todd said: “I am delighted that we are celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Bookbug programme in Scotland. To date, Bookbug has provided well over 6 million books to children and helped families across Scotland to take part in Bookbug activities and enjoy precious moments of reading, story-telling and singing together.

We know these are challenging times for families so it is heartening to see that the Bookbug online sessions are proving to be such a success. I am also pleased to see that this year’s celebrations will be packed with themed activity ideas for families to try at home.

I would like to thank Scottish Book Trust and everyone involved in delivering this wonderful programme and I hope that many families can join in the exciting virtual events and resources during the Bookbug week.”

Marc Lambert, CEO of Scottish Book Trust, said: “Scottish Book Trust is looking forward to celebrating Bookbug’s tenth birthday with families across Scotland through our website, social media channels and Bookbug app. We are extremely proud of the impact that the Bookbug programme has made in the last decade: from delivering free bags of books, to bringing communities together through Bookbug Sessions, to working with families at home who need our support to get started sharing stories and songs together.

“We'd like to thank all our colleagues from libraries, health, education, social care and the third sector for building Bookbug with us – it truly is a national partnership that shows how much we value books, and value children. We look forward to receiving everyone’s birthday messages for Bookbug and hope that families can join us to celebrate.”

Funded by the Scottish Government and Creative Scotland, Bookbug is Scottish Book Trust’s Early Years Programme. The Bookbug programme encourages mums, dads and carers to sing and share stories with their children from birth. It gives every child in Scotland four free bags of books in their first 5 years, gifting over 885,000 books every year. Bookbug also runs regular free story, song and rhyme events in libraries, shopping centres and other community venues which attracted audiences of over 720,000 parents and children in 2018-19.

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