The Lost Words for every Sheffield Primary School

Dear backers

We have bagged up the books! In the course of a tiring but hugely enjoyable afternoon, we packed 154 copies of The Lost Words into bags featuring a stunning design by Keith Deakin. That’s one bag for each of Sheffield’s 150 primary schools and four for dementia charities. A further 28 books will be given separately to Sheffield Central Library, one for every branch library in the city.

Keith's partner, Sarah, also printed the image onto a personalised bookplate for every school,  charity and library, and Sue Unwin created some beautiful oak leaf labels to tie on the bags. This involved her drawing round one of Vernon’s leaves 154 times and then cutting them all out!

Every bag also contains a full-colour copy of the Explorer's Guide to the Lost Words by Eva John, which is packed with ideas for using the book in the classroom and beyond. Printing was generously funded by Sheffield's independent bookshop Rhyme and Reason at Hunter's Bar, whose manager, Richard Welsh, had already given us a substantial discount on the books.

Just one more thing will be added to the bags before they go out to schools, and that’s a very exciting announcement about next summer. In June 2019, there’s to be an exhibition at Sheffield’s prestigious Millennium Gallery of children’s art inspired by The Lost Words!

As soon as the Museums Sheffield education officer comes back from her holidays, she’ll be working on producing a flyer for us, so watch this space!

And the first book bags will be presented to children and teachers from Sheffield’s primary schools at the Sheffield Street Tree Festival on 29 September. We’re delighted that Liz Ballard, chief executive of Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust, has agree to do the presentations. (The whole festival programme is looking really exciting – you can see it here: https://sheffieldstreettreefestival.wordpress.com/programme/.)

So thank you again to all of you for making this possible!

With best wishes

Joanna Dobson, Sarah Deakin, Margaret Peart and Susan Unwin
On behalf of Vernon Oak