Our Little Library

Little library GRASS

The GRASS Cliftonville Little Library is located at the community garden on the junction of Stanley Road and Gordon Road, Cliftonville. Designed and built by our volunteers, it forms part of an international initiative that encourages a love of reading by a cultivating neighbourhood book exchanges.

Passers-by and residents can take a book to read or leave one for someone else to enjoy.

Does our GRASS Little Library make a difference?

27% of children left primary school in 2019 unable to read at the expected level and it is estimated that there are nine million working aged adults in England with low literacy or numeracy skills or both. (DfE 2019 and OECD 2016).

A third of businesses in the UK are not satisfied with young people’s literacy skills when they enter the workforce and a similar number have organised remedial training for their recruits to improve basic skills. (National Literacy Trust 2018).

At the age of three there is already a gap in language skills, measured using ‘months of development’, of almost a year and a half between children from the best-off and poorest families. (Read on Get on, 2014)

1 in 8 of the nation’s most disadvantaged children say they don’t have a book of their own at home yet children who own a book are 15 times more likely to read above the level expected for their age and are four times less likely to read below the expected level. (National Literacy Trust, 2017).

Children learn to read when reading is enjoyable and happens regularly at home and at school. If you have large quantities of quality used books please email secretary@grasscliftonville.org or chair@grasscliftonville.org before depositing.

By creating the GRASS Little Library we hope to improve child and adult literacy.