Bookshop owner launches trust to encourage reading

A bookshop owner is launching a community interest company (CIC) to encourage children to love reading.

Duncan Cooper, from The Children's Bookshelf in Hereford, said the idea was to give every child in Herefordshire the opportunity to own a book.

The not-for-profit initiative, called the Herefordshire Reading Trust, will run alongside the bookshop and will be launched on 3 May, he said.

"I know that lots of children out there do not have books in their homes," he added.

The reading trust will hold pop-up events in nurseries, schools, and colleges, offering books either for free or low cost.

A fundraising page has been set up for the first pop-up event and volunteers are also needed, Mr Cooper said.

He said in world of devices, tablets and phones, books were still "on the up" and were very important, particularly in primary education.

"Because of the cost of living [crisis] and other things and priorities have changed slightly, I don't think a lot of parents have much disposable money to be able to spend on books, so that's where we can come in," he added.

He said a further scheme would allow schools and nurseries to collect used books and drop them off at the trust to be sorted, priced and labelled.

"Then we'll do a sale and 100% of the profits go into a book allowance for that particular setting who's donated to us, and then they can get vouchers or credits to use to spend in store," he said.

Mr Cooper said there were plans for both the bookshop and the reading trust to move to a larger, shared space.

"Where we are at the shop at the moment, it's a little bit small. We want to be able to run the CIC plus the bookshop under one roof because obviously the bookshop will then feed the book trust," he said.

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