National Year of Reading 2008

Residents in the Vale have been voting during the last six weeks on which two books they would most like to read during October. Cllr Hampton unveiled the winning books at a Barry market stall set up by library staff to promote the books. In announcing the winners, Cllr Hampton said "It has been a great coup for Barry to have been chosen as one of the two Reading Communities in Wales. The whole idea of reading communities is that everyone reads and discusses the same books at the same time and two really good contenders have been voted as the clear favourites by people in the Vale."

The two winning books are The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and Martha, Jac a Sianco by Caryl Lewis. The library service in the Vale is now challenging everyone to read one or both of the books in the coming weeks, and to make this possible they will make lots of extra copies of the books available. The Welsh book is also available in an English translation.

Librarian Chris Edwards said "We’ve had lots of interest in the shortlist of twelve books and we know many people who have tried to read all the books on the shortlist in order to choose their favourite. We expect hundreds of extra people to read the winning books during the coming weeks and we don’t think they’ll be disappointed with the choice."

Libraries in the Vale will be promoting the two books throughout October and will be hosting the Barry Book Bash over the weekend of 31 October to 2 November. The weekend will highlight the pleasure of reading. Several prominent authors have been invited to talk about their work. The weekend will be launched by broadcaster Chris Needs and there will be appearances by Caryl Lewis – author of the winning book Martha, Jac a Sianco - Catrin Collier, Bernard Knight, Tony Curtis, Phil Carradice, Bethan Gwanas, Mererid Hopwood, Sheenagh Pugh and others. Amongst other events there will be story-telling sessions and workshops on how to illustrate, how to write and how to design a book cover.