BookTok Bookshelves Coming to UK Cities Soon

TikTok and the National Literacy Trust (NLT) are partnering to bring 20 bookshelves to 11 UK areas — “Birmingham, Blackpool, Bradford, Doncaster, Manchester, Middlesborough, Newcastle, Nottingham, Peterborough, Stoke and Swindon.”

The partnership entails TikTok paying for books that will be selected by NLT youth volunteers, and placed in areas that have high foot traffic, like around youth clubs and community centers.

This initiative seeks to rectify the fact that 1 in 12 children ages 5-18 don’t own a book of their own, and fewer than 30% of children 8-18 read daily, according to NLT research.

Head of local areas for the NLT, Jason Vit, said “We hope the BookTok Bookshelves will increase young people’s appetite for reading and therefore the demand for books, forming part of a reading ecosystem that includes schools, libraries and bookshops.”

To read more about the TikTok/National Literacy Trust (NLT) partnership, visit TheGuardian.com.

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.