Friday afternoon help!

And here is the lovely Chess from Cimteq Ltd making her first refuge call. A big thank you to Cimteq for allowing her to work for us for a few hours (hopefully on a regular basis). She has already introduced us to a great project planning app that we can share in the cloud (anyone else work better if they are being held externally accountable?!) and her telephone manner is just right. She will definitely be an asset! Looking forward to the next time already

Good News February!

There are a lot of people to thank this month as we have been very, very lucky.

We have been looking for a courier to reduce our costs for several years now and this month we were put in touch with an organisation that has reduced our courier fees by a quarter – thank you InXpress.

We have had two excellent collections in from the wonderful Amy and the equally stellar Jackie – their collections are always huge and in fantastic condition. We hardly need to go through their books at all!

More money came in from the Nelmes family (in lieu of a Christmas present) that means we now have enough to support an entire refuge.

We have a meeting soon as our new website is nearing completion – we are extremely grateful to Tree Frog Digital for creating this for us.

You may have noticed the fabulous new logo which has been completed by MakoCreative. We also have new bookmarks courtesy of MakoCreative. They designed them and then put us in contact with a printer who has given us a fabulous price – they arrived yesterday and are so much better in quality that the previous ones. We also get colour on the reverse for the first time.

We also had a lovely cheque arrive this month from St George’s Primary School in Wallasey for £143.

And finally we have been contacted this week by 2 more people offering help. One with our website posts and one as a new trustee who has charity experience – so watch this space! How exciting……

Happy reading!

Pilates & Pudding!

New event for 2019! Should be a fun afternoon – for more information and to reserve a place please contact us. Spaces are limited so book your place early!

Read On. Get On Campaign Video

Posted on September 18, 2014 by Book at Bedtime

Shocking video really gets the message across that reading is vital

As part of the Read on. Get On campaign, which has been launched by a coalition of charities, businesses and authors to encourage professionals and parents to help children improve their reading, Save the Children have published a video that illustrates the impact that not being able to read well can have on someone’s life.

Called Ten Minutes a Day Could Change Everything, the video is a little shocking but really gets the message across. Reading changes lives.

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild

Posted on September 19, 2014 by Book at Bedtime

Our favourite book this week is Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild

This book has just come in with one of the donation boxes. I never read it as a child but it was brought to my attention in the film You Got Mail in a particularly poignant scene with the main character Meg Ryan. And now I have a chance to read it. It has been in print since 1936 and is charming. Jacqueline Wilson says it is one of her all-time favourite books and I can’t help but agree.

So what is the story? Pauline, Petrova and Posy are orphans determined to help out their new family by joining the Children’s Academy of Dancing and Stage Training. But when they vow to make a name for themselves, they have no idea it’s going to be such hard work! They launch themselves into the world of show business, complete with working papers, the glare of the spotlight, and practice, practice, practice! Pauline is destined for the movies. Posy is a born dancer. But practical Petrova finds she’d rather pilot a plane than perform a pirouette. Each girl must find the courage to follow her dream.

Petrova asks at the end which of the three girls you’d rather be. As for me – well, it would have to be the dancer. And now I think I need to go and watch You Got Mail……

Give a book this Christmas – instead of a goat!

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Book at Bedtime

I was talking to a friend about the need to raise funds to buy the Family Change sets of books for Book at Bedtime and she said “have you heard of ‘buy a goat’?” I wasn’t sure we were still talking about the same topic but she explained it was a way for people to buy gifts that benefitted someone they didn’t know. It rang bells. “So I buy a goat?” “No, you pay the charity to buy the goat and they deliver it to the person in need. In return they send you a nice card with a picture of the goat you have bought. You can then give the card to someone and say that instead of buying them a gift that they can open this year you’ve bought a gift on their behalf that someone else can open. They get to feel good because they’ve helped someone who needs a goat”.

What a good idea! So Book at Bedtime now enables you to do just that. Well, not a goat obviously. A book! Much less trouble.

So this Christmas you can buy a gift that helps a child that has experienced domestic abuse put their life back together.
And even better this gift will continue to help another child, and another, and another …… until hundreds of children have been helped by your one gift.

Our Family Change books are used by playworkers in women’s refuges to help children deal with their emotions and the terrible things they may have witnessed or experienced. Research shows that children who are helped to deal with their emotions are much less likely to become violent as they grow older.

So how do you buy a book? You choose your book from the list. You then contact us to tell us the title and what your name is so that we can put it on the sticker that is on the front of the book (you can be anonymous if you prefer). We then offer you ways of how to pay.

Books start from £5.99 each and you will either get a lovely certificate via email thanking you for your gift or if you wish to receive a card in the post so that you have something to give to your loved one on Christmas Day please add £1.50 to the price of the book and tell us your postal address.

So which book or books would you like to gift? A Huge Bag of Worries is very popular, as is It’s Not Fair but my favourite is A Terrible Thing Happened – poor Sherman! Thank you ?

Thank you HM Revenue & Customs!

Posted on November 28, 2014 by Book at Bedtime

Just a short post to say Whoopdedoopdedoop!

WE HAVE IT! Just opened a letter from HM Revenue & Customs (not always the cause for celebration!) and we now have a gift aid number. This means we can set up a donations page online. Fabulous!

The happiest ending of all is seeing a child lost in a book

Posted on March 11, 2015 by Book at Bedtime

This article from the Daily Telegraph last July came my way just recently and I couldn’t agree more. The journalist had personal experience of her son struggling with reading who was lucky in having a Reading Recovery programme at his primary school. It took several months but he went from the cat sat on the mat to voraciously reading anything that came his way – including road signs whilst in the car! That’s the kind of eagerness that is wonderful to hear about.

She goes on to say that a new study claims that reading well at an early age makes you more intelligent in later life. They are not sure exactly why but contrary to earlier opinion that intelligence is something you are born with they now think that the more you read the smarter you become.

I particularly like one bit where she says “watching a child learn to read is like seeing them reborn – this time with superpowers. They are suddenly capable of infinite adventures, in the privacy of their own head.”

And the final paragraph as she comments on watching him read Harry Potter in bed after his light is supposed to be out is lovely. “he moves his lips and frowns as he follows his finger across the page. He is lost to me, doing battle with dragons and wizards”. This is what reading is all about and how can you not smile at that?