When I was a child growing up in Portsmouth my mum took me to our local  library in North End and I remember feeling as if I had stumbled on a treasure trove. Reading was then and still is one my major pleasures in life, and I am still a regular user of the library. As a child I would read anything and everything and like Katy in “What Katy Did” all my school friends would hide their books whenever I came round to play otherwise I would just sit and read their story books and not play with them.

I cannot imagine a life without books. If I was stuck on a desert island, I could do without the 8 records, as long as I could swap them for books. Reading opens up whole new worlds for children and sets them on a learning path that stays with them all their lives. This is why I was so pleased to support this year’s Summer Reading challenge “The Big Wild Read”.

This campaign, organised by the Reading Agency, aims to encourage children to visit their local libraries and keep them reading during the summer holiday period. This has the double advantage of ensuring they do not lose any reading skills during the break from school teaching, and of opening up the world of opportunity that books represent. Research shows that children often take a step back in their reading during the summer holidays, and we want to get them into libraries to keep them on track before they go back to school in September.Every year, more and more children take part in the Summer Reading Challenge, undertaken in partnership with public libraries and supported by children’s publishers.

This summer a staggering 700 000 children are expected to take part, and an estimated 16 million books will be borrowed. I recently attended an event in Parliament organised by the All Party Libraries Group where I received a gift of 3 children’s books which I shall be donating to my local library hoping to encourage parents to bring their children along and introduce them to the wonderful world of libraries.