The Inverell Public Library is hosting a series of challenges until January 15 for primary and high school aged children. 

“It’s just encouraging children to come and borrow books from the library and read, so that for that big holiday period, they’re not doing no reading and losing those skills that they’ve developed over the year,” Leanne Schuhmacher said.

Readers have a wide range of challenges to choose from, each one earning them more entries for the draw to win $200 of gift vouchers for the Dust Jacket, Big W and iTunes for junior entrants and a $50 Dust Jacket voucher for high school readers. There are also encouragement prizes.

Junior readers can try and defeat ‘spotlight challenges’ by reading series, authors and non fiction books, or they can step up their game with the ‘big challenge’.

“The junior reading challenge lasts for 81 days. We’re encouraging children to try and read 80 books during that period of time, which is not difficult for the amount of books that a lot of them are reading,” Leanne said.

High school readers are challenged to delve into unfamiliar genres, such as steam punk, coming of age, dystopian and gothic.

They can also earn entries by attending the high school book club, which meets at the library on the last Thursday of the month.

Some challenges don’t even require reading. Junior entrants have ‘lantern challenges’, where they create a timeline of books that are important to them.

“We ask them to talk about books that have lit up their world in however long they’ve been alive.”

High school readers are encouraged to write book reviews, which can be as short as three sentences or even three words.

“Hopefully it appeals to readers of all levels and readers of all styles,” Leanne said.

“Last year for the junior reading challenge, we had about 40 children that entered, and 1300 books were read in that three month time period.”