We’re Going on a Book Hunt!

By our Rochdale Schools Linking Facilitator

Books are brilliant.  The right book, at the right time, can be life changing.  In Rochdale, the books we use in our programme have been drawn from the TLN recommended reading list, suggestions from other Linking programmes across the country and titles teachers have loved.  They are, and remain, a great list of books.  They are the collective vision of enthusiastic adults who are deeply knowledgeable about Linking.

According to the former First Lady of the United States, Laura Bush, ‘The power of a book lies in its power to turn a solitary vision into a shared vision.’  Our book list is our vision.  But we are well aware that this is the vision of the people delivering Linking and not the vision of the children who have lived it.

In Rochdale, during Schools Linking Celebration Week, children have been hunting books.  Each class has been invited to explore a library, encouraging children to work together to make recommendations about which books best represent kindness, home, meeting new people, working together and making the world a better place.  Some classes have visited their local library and others used their school library.  Either way, the idea was that the young people would feed into the books selected for our programme next year. 

There has been no shelf control.  Any book, fiction or non-fiction, can be recommended.  All children have had to do is explore, select, explain their choice and say how the book made them feel.  So far, recommendations have included familiar titles, books from the original list and books I’ve never even heard of.   I’ve got a lot of reading to do this summer!

We decided that all our 1,200 Linking children should be involved in the design and improvement of our programme for next year.  The books that they have hunted will be used to create our next reading list.  We know we can’t feature every recommended book, so teachers have been asked to shortlist.  We hope that by working together, asking the children and staff about what next year’s linkers will read, then our shared vision will be even more powerful.  I guess you could call this a ‘pupil advisory group’.  I’d call it time well spent, after all any time spent with books is never wasted.

Thank you to Rochdale Libraries, Touch Stones, M6 Theatre, local artists and TLN for supporting our programme and contributing to each child’s cultural journey as part of Linking.

What does Linking look like in Rochdale?

The Rochdale Schools Linking programme has been running since 2017.  Forty classes from across the Borough meet for a year-long link. The local approach involves all children having an enhanced cultural experience through the vehicle of Linking.  All children visit M6 Theatre, work with local artists, have input from Cartwheel Arts and engage with Touch Stones, who are our arts and cultural heritage provider.