Children with VI Encouraged to take on Reading Challenge

Thousands of children across the UK will be heading to their local libraries this week to begin the Summer Reading Challenge – the annual readathon organised by The Reading Agency.

The challenge allows children to win rewards after reading books and keeping a summer reading log.

In partnership with The Reading Agency, The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) is encouraging children with vision impairments, like Thomas Zalba-Smith, to get their reading vibes on this summer and take part in the challenge using books in large print audio and braille from RNIB’s online library.

Seven-year-old Thomas has nystagmus and is registered as sight impaired, but this hasn’t stopped him completing the challenge four times at his local library.

Thomas is raring to go for this year’s challenge. Although he reads standard type, he prefers books like the Tom Gates series – fictional graphic books written by Liz Pichon taking the form of an illustrated diary written by the eponymous schoolboy -

where text is broken up into small chunks with doodles between. This gives his eyes a bit of a rest.

“Tom Gates got him devouring books from beginning to end,” said Thomas’ mum Helen.

“Since then, he’s been sitting in the garden reading and sitting in his window reading for hours on end.

“It was an overnight transformation from really resenting having to read at all, to wanting to read independently when we started putting these kinds of books in front of him. Now he’s getting into other types of books because he’s realising what he gets out of that experience.

“Thomas has always loved the Summer Reading Challenge and he takes mapping his reading and getting his medal very seriously.

“This will be the first year he will be devouring much longer text-heavy books and be able to really dissect what he’s learning from the story, so it will give us a lot of opportunity to really talk about the books with him.

“He’s already reminding me which Tom Gates books he doesn’t have, but we go into the library and try to be open minded and sometimes he brings books home he had never previously thought about at all. He loves it!

“I feel like the vision impairment was holding him back from loving reading, but now we’ve found a way that enables him to manage it, it really is his thing. It’s his escape which is quite miraculous given that he is a boy who doesn’t normally sit still for more than five minutes. He will literally read books from cover to cover if we let him.”

The marketing for this year’s Summer Reading Challenge includes a cartoon character (pictured above) with vision impairment. His name is Robyn and he's a braille user.

To complete the Summer Reading Challenge, children can read any books they like, including from RNIB’s library at www.rniblibrary.com in whichever accessible format they prefer.

For further information visit  https://summerreadingchallenge.org.uk/