The number of schools involved with the KM Charity Team’s literacy initiative, Buster’s Book Club, will double this academic year. More than 20,000 Kent school children and families are already signed up to use the successful home reading initiative in 2017. Due to the demand the deadline to sign up has been extended to 21 December giving schools a last chance to join the popular initiative.

The initiative uses a unique triple challenge to engage children and families to read more – a weekly reading class of the week award, a monthly inter-school challenge offering leisure attraction vouchers as prizes and an annual collaborative attempt to turn participating children into reading millionaires if they collectively read more than one million minutes of reading. Schools also have the chance to win a visit by Phil Gallagher, who plays the role of Mister Maker on CBeebies.

Simon Dolby said: “The explosion in interest has been fantastic for the team developing the Buster’s Book Club initiative. We are achieving a very high percentage of schools renewing and attracting a large number of new sign-ups, which is great news.”

The initiative is supported by Kent County Council, Medway Council, Kent Libraries, 3Rs teacher recruitment, Kent Reliance, Specsavers, Bel UK, Orbit housing association and Golding Homes.

The deadline for schools to sign up is midnight on 21 December. Find out more at www.bustersbookclub.co.uk