Children’s books have been placed in seat pockets of easyJet aircraft to encourage youngsters to read more.
More than 17,500 copies of books translated into seven European languages will be stocked across 300 planes this summer.
Kid Normal, Peter Pan, Alice In Wonderland and The Jungle Book are among the titles available.
Once the flights land, children will be able to download free samples of books and enter a writing competition.
Research commissioned to mark the launch of the so-called flying libraries found that almost two out of five (38%) parents say their child has fewer than 10 books at home, and a typical British child aged between six and 12 has not visited a public library in more than six months.
EasyJet’s director of cabin crew, Tina Milton, said: “Reading is so important for fuelling a child’s development, vocabulary and imagination and a flight provides the perfect opportunity for them to get stuck into a book.”
Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust, which is supporting the scheme, added: “Getting books into the hands of children, and helping them discover a love of reading, can set them on the path to a more successful future.”
Bloomsbury Children’s Books and Alma Books are helping to stock the aircraft, while BBC Radio 1 DJs Greg James and Chris Smith, who wrote Kid Normal, are ambassadors for the project.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here