SpaceHop - Reading agency

In summer 2010, 750,000 children took a giant leap into the final frontier by joining Space Hop at their local library.

The aim of the challenge was to get children to read six books from their library during the summer holidays. Everyone signing up for the Summer Reading Challenge got to keep track of the books they read on a special fold-out poster allowing them to share their progress with friends and family.

Why Space Hop?

Space Hop taps into children's fascination with space travel and crazy alien worlds. It's an imaginative and fun way to encourage children to read. And they might find out something about the planets in their universe at the same time! It links into the 2010 BBC Year of Science, and CBBC's Space Hoppers, which saw two intrepid travellers investigate worlds beyond our planet and find out how to holiday in outer space.

The Summer Reading Challenge is an interactive experience that children love to take part in over the holidays. It gets them into libraries and gives them the confidence they need to choose their own books and take their reading to the next stage. For many children, the Summer Reading Challenge is just the incentive they need to turn them into readers for life.

e-bloc were commissioned to produce the on-line interactive experience. Built using PaperVision 3D and a mix of rendered graphics we are really happy with the results.

Results:

In 2010 a record number children took part in the twelfth Summer Reading Challenge, Space Hop which had a theme marking the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing.

• 760,000 children took part in Space Hop
• 57% of children completed the full Challenge by reading 6 books over the summer
• 97% of libraries in the UK were involved, offering the SRC through 4,000 libraries
• 17.8 million children's materials were borrowed over 10 weeks June to September
• More than 3 million books were read by children taking part in the Challenge.
• 49,300 people signed up to the Space Hop website and sent in 9000 messages sharing book ideas and getting advice from online librarians and top authors.
• 220,000 children attended 15,000 Space Hop events organised by libraries.

The national Summer Reading Challenge, coordinated by The
Reading Agency, is run in 95% of UK public libraries.