Hidden treasure for story explorers across North Yorkshire Coast

The books started to appear in bus stops, on benches and even in flowerbeds last weekend. Over the next few weeks 200 books will be hidden around Scarborough while residents in Whitby and Filey will each be in with a chance of finding any one of 100 hidden titles.

The books are all inside plastic wallets to prevent them from being damaged and finders are instructed to quarantine their newly found treasure for 72 hours once they take it home.

Our Stories is a campaign to inspire parents and carers to read with their children every day in order to increase local literacy levels. Research from the National Literacy Trust shows that reading has provided solace for many children during lockdown – one in three young people are reading more compared to before and three in five agreed that reading helped them feel better.[i]

However, as many as 44,000 children in Yorkshire do not own a single book of their own at home (almost 1,000 of those are children in Scarborough) meaning that they’re missing out on the many benefits of reading.[ii] The hidden books project hopes to change this by sparking a love of reading for the first time.

That’s why there’s no obligation for children to re-hide the books they find as part of this project – instead children can share with a friend or sibling and reread it again later. Families who find the books have been invited to post about it on social media, tagging #OurStories, and there will be clues to find the hidden books on the Our Stories Facebook page.

Volunteers who would like to get involved in this project (and future ones) can contact Diana Logan on [email protected]

Diana Logan, acting manager, said “The hidden books project is a simple way to put some smiles on children’s faces during the winter months. We’ve already started to receive messages from families who have found them and it’s lovely to hear about the impact they’re having – it’s a simple way to spread some joy while also improving the skills of local young people.”

[i] National Literacy Trust (2020) Children and young people’s reading in 2020 before and during the COVID-19 lockdown[ii] National Literacy Trust (2019) Gift of reading: children's book ownership in 2019