The Queen mingled with beloved children’s book character Peter Rabbit and literary royalty this afternoon as she hosted a celebration marking the 100th anniversary of the UK’s largest children’s reading charity.
Avid reader Camilla hosted swathes of friends and famous authors at Clarence House, her London residence, on Tuesday afternoon, including Richard Osman, Sir Philip Pullman and Sir Michael Morpurgo, President of BookTrust.
Peter Rabbit also made a surprise appearance to mark the launch of the new book under the charity’s Bookstart Baby programme, which provides a book for every child in the UK before their first birthday. Introduced to the large-than-life animal, the Queen enthusiastically shook his hand and happily posed for pictures.
This year’s book, a brand-new Peter Rabbit title called Four Happy Bunnies, has been created exclusively for the programme.
Bookstart Baby has supported families with newborn babies for over 30 years. Health visitors, registrars, and many other early years partners take part in the programme, which reaches 90% of all newborn babies.
The programme provides books to families along with help and advice on early reading, often given at one of the health checks in the first nine months of a baby’s life.
In an off-the-cuff speech, Camilla spoke about how society needs to encourage young people more than ever to read, given the march of modern technology.
Cutting a cake to mark the occasion she said: “Can I say happy 100th birthday to everybody involved in BookTrust. I wouldn’t be standing here now if I hadn’t been read to as a child.
“We were read to by my father every night and it just shows how important it is. It’s lodged in my very small brain for evermore.
“But the job you are doing is ensuring that a great deal of children are going to have the same experience and enjoy reading all their lives.
“Especially in this day of phones, a lot of children aren’t reading as much as they should be. “The statistics show it is even more important now to start them at an early age and get them reading all the way through their lives.”
The programme provides books to families along with help and advice on early reading, often given at one of the health checks in the first nine months of a baby’s life.
BookTrust research shows that reading from the earliest years has a powerful impact at a critical stage of children’s development, helping them build strong bonds with caregivers and develop important life skills, beyond literacy, as they grow.
The Queen, who is BookTrust’s Patron, met a host of authors, celebrities, politicians and those working with families across the country at the centenary event.
Alongside hearing about the book, the event was a chance for The Queen to celebrate the impact made by BookTrust since it was first founded 100 years ago.
Each year the charity gets millions of children reading, especially those from low-income families or vulnerable backgrounds.
It has grown over the decades to become the UK’s largest reading charity and now works with 30,000 local partners, reaching 1.4 million children each year across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.