The Times and The Sunday Times Books for Schools is back

The Times and The Sunday Times popular Books for Schools campaign is back.

It offers every school in the country, primary and secondary, the chance to increase the number of books in its library – absolutely free.

On offer are books for all ages from such well known children’s writers as Michael
Rosen, Charlie Higson, Axel Scheffler, Jacqueline Wilson, Anthony Horowitz,
Michael Morpurgo, as well as much-loved classics from C.S Lewis and Roald Dahl.

Titles are available for ages 3-7, 7-9, 9-11 and 11-14.

Schools’ registration is now open, with an incentive of 100 bonus tokens for each school if they sign up before 30 November. From January 2009, on every day during each of the three school terms, readers of The Times and The Sunday Times can collect tokens that can be exchanged for free books. With books on offer for as little as ten tokens, schools will soon benefit from hundreds of free books.

Axel Scheffler, illustrator of The Gruffalo, says: “This great new Times initiative gives more children increased access to great books and encourages reading for pleasure in schools.”

Books for Schools was first launched in 1999 and in five years over 1.3 billion tokens were redeemed. Some 6.6 million books, worth more than £50 million, were put onto the shelves of schools in the UK at no cost to the schools themselves.

For more information and to see a full list of available books, go to:

www.freebooksforschools.co.uk or www.times-education.co.uk

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For more information about Books for Schools, please contact
Kiri Gillespie or Elise Oliver at Colman Getty
Tel: 020 7631 2666
Fax: 020 7631 2699
Email: kiri@colmangetty.co.uk / Elise@colmangetty.co.uk

Notes to Editor:

• The first set of tokens will appear in The Times and The Sunday Times every day for a period of 12 weeks from January 2009. At the end of this period, all registered schools will be asked to count up the number of tokens collected, select their free books from the current catalogue and mail their tokens, together with their book order
• The Times and The Sunday Times, in association with Scholastic Book Clubs, have sourced a compelling list of books from a wide range of publishers with titles for ages 3-7, 7-9, 9-11 and 11-14. The catalogue of available books will differ each term – with a core list of key titles and a selection of new titles.