Evelina Hospital School - Bringing the Joy of Reading to The Most Vulnerable Kids
The Background
It was in November 2022, at the RACE Chartermark conference that Assistant Head Teacher, Claire Bond of Evelina Hospital School heard Ndah speak.
Clare got in touch soon after requesting a meeting and a mini diversity audit of their library provision. Few weeks later, the meeting happened. By her own admission, Claire liked seeing the results of the audit because she thought they were doing well.
The Challenge
What our audit revealed was the typical problems or challenges we look to solve: very few diverse authors or voices, mainly the usual traditional suspects, mainly white male authors and traditional stories with traditional outcomes. Same old, same old basically.
We engaged with Claire on this visit to understand Evelina's objectives for children's literature, the scope of what they wanted and the specific requirements from month to month. Inspired by our story, journey and our palpable love for books, we were pleased to be engaged by Evelina Children's Hospital School to help transformed their library.
The Solution
Today, Happier Every Chapter supplies Evelina Hospital School with a book bundle each month. The bundles contain diverse and inclusive bestsellers for Early Years Foundation Stage, Key 1, 2 & 3. Each bundle contains books for the theme of the month e.g. Earth Day/Climate Change, Mental Health Awareness, International Women's Day etc. Asked what has been the benefits of working with Happier Every Chapter, Claire responded:
- Amazingly beautiful books
- Different Starting Points
- Books that answer interesting and difficult questions
And her advice to schools considering working with Happier Every Chapter "Go for it. A great chance to transform the curriculum and the library in the school. Opportunities to inspire everyone, to get reading and reading different texts."
If you'd like to take Claire's advice and are an educator looking to improve the literacy outcomes of your pupils especially the lowest attaining 20% or you simply want to diversify your school library collection, visit our schools page to learn more about what we do. Happier Every Chapter works with schools, academies across the UK to improve reading attainment and diversity awareness through diversity audits and monthly boxes/bundles of diverse, inclusive and representative bestsellers with different curriculum aligned themes each month.