The Children's Bookshow is a charity that inspires school children with a love of reading through an annual programme of in-theatre and digital performances and in-school workshops with the very best authors and illustrators from around the world.
What's happening?
Spring Performances 2025
Join us for our Spring programme to celebrate the joy of reading. See below for more details and to book your place!
Autumn performances 2025
We have an absolutely awesome line-up this year! See below for a sneak peak of our autumn theatre performances. Booking opens on 1st May after our launch event.
- Katherine Rundell performance, Blackpool, Friday 19th September
- Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson performance, Wolverhampton, Monday 29th September
- Michael Rosen performance, Coventry, Monday 6th October
- Matt Goodfellow performance, Bristol, Wednesday 8th October
- Owen Sheers and Helen Stephens performance, Hull, Tuesday 14th October
- Rebecca Cobb and Mariesa Dulak performance, Milton Keynes, Monday 20th October
- Catherine Rayner performance, Newcastle, Monday 3rd November
- Yasmeen Ismail performance, Portsmouth, Wednesday 5th November
- Catherine Johnson performance, Ipswich, Thursday 6th November
- Alom Shaha and Sarthak Sinha performance, Exeter, Tuesday 11th November
- SF Said performance, Peterborough, Monday 17th November



Free online event: Michael Rosen on Reading for Pleasure and the launch of our autumn programme
We're delighted to announce that our patron, Michael Rosen will be launching the autumn 2025 programme of The Children’s Bookshow and will be sharing his years of expertise on how to promote reading for pleasure in school in an engaging free online event for teachers, librarians and education professionals.
Keep up-to-date with what we're doing
During term time we send regular newsletters with an update on what The Children's Bookshow is doing. It could be a book of the week focus, news from our events team, a reading list of our current favourites and activities for children to do at home. Sign up below. You can discover more about great children's books by exploring our website and looking especially at our What's Happening? section.
We've been busy at The Children's Bookshow...
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The Children's Bookshow releases 2024 Impact Report
We have released a report detailing the impact that our work had in 2024. Read on!
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Considering the environmental impact of The Children’s Bookshow
We are committed to reducing our carbon footprint. Find out more about what we're doing to reduce our environmental impact.
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A round-up of our theatre tour 2024
Read on for a round-up of our autumn tour, plus news of a book giveaway and video release.
We love poetry at The Children's Bookshow. Enjoy listening to Valerie Bloom talk about how poetry makes her feel.


The Children's Bookshow takes children's authors to meet tens of thousands of children, introducing the children to how and why writers write, illustrators illustrate. They give children insights into how they too can transform thoughts and feelings into words and pictures. This is not simply a matter of it being enjoyable, it's a necessary part of what we understand by the word 'education'.
This year The Children's Bookshow will give over 7000 children participating in our programme a free, signed copy of the author's book to take home, thanks to the generous support of Unwin Charitable Trust.

