The leader of a Kent education charity believes his reading millionaires will ‘smash’ their book challenge this academic year.

One of the aims of the KM Year of Reading campaign is to sign up extra schools involved with the hit initiative Buster’s Book Club, run by the charity department at this newspaper. The scheme challenges pupils to read more through a series of inter-class and inter-school events, culminating in the pupils involved collectively aiming to read more than a million minutes, and earning the special status of reading millionaires.

Last academic year Buster’s Book Club generated 2.8 million minutes and Simon Dolby from the KM Charity Team said he believed the children would surpass that in 2017.

Mr Dolby said: “KM’s Year of Reading is all about engaging every part of the community to think more about books as a fun leisure activity. But it is also aimed at making reading cool for pupils at primary school level. The reading challenges delivered as part of Buster’s Book Club are excellent at engaging children, particularly reluctant boy readers, and bring the family in to support reading at home. The level of interest from schools in this initiative gives me every confidence that the pupils will smash the 2.8 million minutes of reading figure achieved last academic year.”

Literacy leaders and school management team have until 16 December to sign up to Buster’s Book Club. To find out more visit www.bustersbookclub.co.uk

Fact-file

• Buster’s Book Club started as a pilot in 2014 involving 10 schools which generated 500,000 minutes of reading.
• In 2015, 10,000 pupils and families were involved and recorded two million minutes of reading.
• Last academic year the numbers involved rose to 11,000 pupils at 35 primary schools and generated 2.8 million minutes.
• Twenty KCC county councillors are providing grants to subsidise schools in their area to take up Buster’s Book Club
• To find out more visit www.bustersbookclub.co.uk or call 0844 264 0291.