The Children's Book Project

The Children’s Book Project gives prisoners a means to connect and build bridges with the children and young people in their family through the powerful medium of story books.
Our 'Share a Story’ book gifting programme is currently running in 18 prisons and gives parents in prison the opportunity to choose with or on behalf of their children beautiful, age-relevant books to share and chat about together. As well as encouraging reading for pleasure we know this simple act goes some way to support family cohesion, the well-being of children with a parent in prison and parenting skills.
There are a number of book gifting options available as part of the programme, with each prison able to tailor the offer to suit its organisation.
Each participating prison gets one of our iconic green book huts filled with beautiful children’s books. This is set up in the visits room so that parents and children can help themselves to new and preloved books, share them together and then take them home.
We also operate and help facilitate pop-up bookshops run by volunteers and reading mentors on site. Prisoners can visit the bookshop and choose free books to send to their children (or grandchildren, siblings, nephews and nieces). These books are sent to the child together with an accompanying letter written by the prisoner. This allows families to stay connected between visits or when visits by the children are difficult to make. Any prisoner who is allowed access to their child can take part.
We also deliver a regular selection of brand-new book ‘pairs’ - two copies of the same title. One copy can be posted home or taken by the visiting child while the other is retained. This gives parents and children the opportunity to read together via a video call or read and talk about the book together.
For more information about the Children’s Book Project and our work in prisons visit our website

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