Hilary Cashman, prison librarian at HMP Holme House
The Six Book Challenge was a surprise success for us. It was taken up by men who read little or nothing "on the out" and by others who previously would not have considered reading one book, let alone six.
We pitched the Challenge to Essential Skills classes, the Resettlement houseblock and the Therapeutic Community and we linked it to as many programmes as possible. We also included children's books as part of the "Superdads" workshop we offer to promote family reading. All the teachers we liaised with welcomed the Challenge and were impressed by the numbers of students - even the cynical and disaffected - who signed up for it.
Of the 52 who joined only 15 formally finished the Challenge, but this was down to the high turnover in a local prison. No participant returned his diary or said he was giving up and the comments were encouraging.
We have been trying to capture and use this kind of reader feedback for a long time so the Challenge has inspired us to set up a Readers' Panel to have an input into our book selection process.
