£20,000 book bonanza gifted to Scottish schools and libraries

Issued by Beattie Communications on behalf of Scottish Book Trust:

Caol library receives 150 new books.

Scottish Book Trust will deliver a batch of books worth £1,000 to Caol Library, Fort William.

More than 3,000 children’s books worth £20,000 have been donated to schools and libraries around Scotland by the national agency for readers and writers.

Scottish Book Trust will deliver batches of books worth around £1,000 each to 20 winners of a prize draw. The winning organisations are a mixture of primary schools, secondary schools and library groups, and were drawn at random from over 700 entries.

Each of the winners will receive a collection of approximately 150 books that have been selected according to age-group or ability criteria that best fits the requirements of the readers within each school or library. They have been chosen from a wide range of titles that include picture books, audio books, fiction for all age groups, poetry and popular non fiction.

They will be added to the collection available to young people in every corner of Scotland, from Orkney to Lockerbie and from Kelso to Fraserburgh. Among the winners are Papa Westray Primary School, which accommodates nine local children on the Orkney island of Papa Westray, and Whins of Milton school in Stirling, which caters for 24 children with special education needs.

Scottish Book Trust is the national agency for readers and writers, involved in working with schools, libraries and communities across Scotland through a number of projects. This prize draw was open to all organisations listed with the Book Trust as part of the Live Literature Scotland Scheme and the Books, Reading and Writing (BRAW) project. This gift has been made possible following a restructuring of the library collection at its headquarters in Edinburgh.

Jasmine Fassl, children’s programmer at Scottish Book Trust, said: “We were delighted by the response which suggests that books are in high demand and hope that with this donation we are helping to provide a wider choice of reading materials that will encourage children to experience a range of authors, illustrators and topics. These books will not just benefit readers now but will add to the shelf selection for years to come.”

For further information please contact: Ginnie Barnes Tel: 01324 602 550 ginnie.barnes@beattiegroup.com or, David Gaffney Tel. 01324 602 550 / 07876 548 578 david.gaffney@beattiegroup.com