Services for Schools
Summer Reading Challenge 2026: Virtual Assembly with Inspire Libraries and Bethan Woollvin
Join us for our Summer Reading Challenge virtual assembly 2026.
Published 7th July 2026
After four months of reading and close to 3000 votes, school pupils and library users across the county have crowned this year’s InspiREAD Book Award winners!
The awards scheme, run by Nottinghamshire’s Education Library Service (ELS), celebrates UK authors and children’s books, and encourages reading for pleasure for children of all age groups in schools and libraries during the summer term.
Inspire’s Education Library Service has been providing a book-loan service to schools across Nottinghamshire and beyond for almost 100 years, helping to enrich the national curriculum, encourage reading for pleasure and support student wellbeing in primary, secondary, and special school settings. Originally launched by ELS in 2020 during the first Covid-19 lockdown as a virtual book award, InspiREAD has grown steadily and now features every year in Inspire libraries across the county. The awards programme has continued to flourish and reach more readers than ever thanks to support from Arts Council England, Derby Virtual School, Nottinghamshire County Council and Arc Partnership.
Each year, ELS’s librarians curate a longlist of twenty-four outstanding recently published UK children’s books, which is then narrowed down in spring to a final shortlist of twelve titles across three categories.
Among the three award categories, this year’s winners include:
Picture Book Winner
Zebracadabra! by Kes Gray and Fred Blunt
Shorter Book Winner
Badgers are Go! by Susannah Lloyd and Nici Gregory
Longer Book Winner
Scarlet Defender of the Universe by James Davis and Dotty Sutton
With 2026 also marking the National Year of Reading, this has been a standout year for InspiREAD. Engagement from schools with the awards has been phenomenal, boosted by a nationwide campaign to #GoAllIn on reading for pleasure, especially for young children. Since April, InspiREAD has reached 5000 pupils across Nottinghamshire through virtual author talks and face-to-face workshops with the shortlisted authors. In June over 500 pupils from across Derbyshire attended ELS’s first-ever InspiREAD Live! event at Reach Conference Centre, enjoying a day-long programme of author and illustrator workshops to celebrate creativity and reading in schools.
Thank you so much to everyone who has taken part this year and voted! Reading plays a vital role in every child’s education, helping to build confidence, creativity and a lifelong love of learning. Through InspiREAD, we’re proud to support schools by
providing access to high-quality, engaging books, as well as opportunities for
children to actually meet authors and illustrators in person - experiences that
we hope inspire the next generation of writers! It’s so important that we give
children the time, opportunity and resources to discover the joy of reading.
Teachers can borrow the shortlist from the Education Library Service, while anyone can visit their local Inspire library to borrow and enjoy the titles. As part of the awards, ELS hosted free virtual author talks with the shortlisted authors and illustrators, all of which are now available to watch on the Inspire website.
For more information about the InspiRead 2026 Book Awards, resources and to watch the virtual author talks, please visit: InspiRead 2026 | Inspire - Culture, Learning, Libraries
