Books, Rap and Reading for Pleasure

MC Grammar on the power of books to change lives

In our final network meeting of the school year, we were delighted to include an exclusive workshop from award-winning teacher, author and World Book Day ambassador MC Grammar, who shared plenty of upbeat ways to inspire children and young people to read, write and rap.

He included fun ideas to get children excited about reading, starting with selecting a rapper name before picking a book to rap and encouraging them to read to build an arsenal of words for battle or freestyle raps.

He told the inspiring story of how one book, The Gruffalo, changed the trajectory of his life after his wife uploaded a video of him rapping the story to their young daughter. In five days, the video had accrued 10 million views. One of those viewers was Ellen DeGeneres, who flew MC Grammar and his family to America, where he rapped on her show. This led to record, TV and book deals. It was an uplifting reminder of the power of books to change lives.

National Year of Reading success stories

Claire Halstead shared some good news about the National Year of Reading. Though we are just past the halfway mark, the campaign has already contributed to a national focus on reading for pleasure and helped achieve the first recorded rise in reading enjoyment in five years.

It has also secured significant policy and funding commitments to support longer-term improvements in literacy and reading.

Building texts in common matters

Dora Allen shared highlights from the National Literacy Trust’s Annual Literacy Survey on children and young people’s reading enjoyment, frequency and experiences in 2026.

She noted that while a modest rise in reading enjoyment and daily reading is to be celebrated, inequalities remain and while reading for pleasure is important, there are many important reasons why we read and encouragement from others is essential for reading engagement. This is why SLN encourages text talk, building texts in common and whole-school texts.

New Reading for Pleasure resource pack

Our new Reading for Pleasure resource pack is designed to help more children and young people see reading as relevant, worthwhile and part of everyday life.

The free resource bundle includes weekly Text-to-talk assemblies linked to a key event and aligned to a high-quality text. There is a PowerPoint assembly for each week of the school year, organised into half-termly packs, making them easy to plan and deliver.

Reading Rivers are designed to share everything pupils have read, including menus, cereal packets, subtitles and more. There is also a leaflet explaining the idea to parents. They are particularly useful to send out at this time of year, giving new teachers an instant insight into the reading habits of their classes when they are returned in September.

There are also reading recommendations (for example, if you like Lottie Brooks, try this…) to encourage pupils to try something new.