CHILDREN and staff at Bentley Primary School started the summer term with a celebration to embrace their passion for reading and story writing with the opening of a new library.

Having swapped location with the Year 5 classroom, the library has taken on a new lease of life with money gifted from parents to buy books and a magical story teller chair from the Stanley family, while super artist and school parent Anna MacInnes led the transformation of the school’s favourite book characters into an amazing mural. And the school ran a book fair in the autumn term and raised more than £1,000 to buy new books.

A school spokesman said: “During the opening ceremony we launched our Summer Reading Challenge in which we encouraged the children to explore different kinds of reading material in the hope it will further inspire their love of reading.”

The experience was later enhanced with a visit by author Sam Gayton, who came into school for a book signing and to run writing workshops, which was said to have “inspired some fantastic writing!”.