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National Literacy Trust Patron Queen Camilla visited a Bristol school to open its new library

Literacy and cultivating a joy of reading are subjects close to the new Queen’s heart, and in her first solo engagement since the Coronation, HM Queen Camilla visited Shirehampton Primary School in Bristol to open its new school library. This was the first in a series of 50 special primary school libraries to mark the 2023 Coronation.

The Coronation Libraries Project highlights the vital importance of primary school libraries in developing a lifelong love of reading, and the libraries are being created across the UK this year and next in collaboration with Primary School Library Alliance partners, including Bloomberg.

The reading spaces are being established in communities where children are least likely to have books at home. Many of these communities live in areas the Queen visited when she was Duchess of Cornwall and in her role as Patron of the National Literacy Trust. Each library or reading space is being refurbished, restocked and two members of sta will be trained to manage it and deliver a range of reading activities for the whole school. A commemorative plaque will also be placed in each library.

Shirehampton Primary School’s new Coronation library is also the 500thlibrary to be transformed as part of the Primary School Library Alliance campaign – a crosssector collaboration addressing the issue of library provision in primary schools. On the day of the Queen’s visit, other attendees included representatives of National Literacy Trust, Penguin Random House, Arts Council England, Oxford University Press, Chase, Bloomberg and The Portal Trust.

For this special event, the Queen joined Shirehampton pupils, as well as pupil librarians and school librarians from 10 other schools involved in the PSLA library transformation programmes, for a ‘draw your dream library’ workshop. It was led by National Literacy Trust’s Lucy Starbuck Braidley, and with input fromformer Children’s Laureates Cressida Cowell and Malorie Blackman. The pupil librarians then accompanied The Queen to their new Coronation library, where Horrid Henry series author Francesca Simon and pupils were taking part in an interactive reading session.

The Queen was presented with the Coronation Collection – a selection of 23 books voted for by over 12,000 children across the UK in celebration of the Coronation –before unveiling a plaque to o cially open the library space for current and future children to enjoy and develop a love of reading.

“Astonishingly,one in seven state primary schools does not have a library,” says National Literacy Trust CEO Jonathan Douglas. “Spaceslike thesewill have a transformative e ect on these schools’ reading – for pleasure, culture and a positive, lifelong impact.”Former Children’s Laureate, Malorie Blackman adds:“Libraries are places of inspiration, and our children deserve nothing less”.