Little Libraries

The little team at Little Libraries has been working on something special behind the scenes with Tanya Batt ✨

Last year, many kaiako told us they’d love more PLD around early literacy. We were lucky enough to have Tanya facilitate beautiful, engaging workshops across the motu. We got an incredible response from those who were able to attend.

Now, we’re making some of those ideas and inspirations even more accessible!

We just wrapped filming a series of short videos with Tanya, designed to help kaiako feel more confident using their Little Library as a storytelling and literacy tool. Expect simple, practical ideas, playful prompts and real examples of what storytelling can look like in practice with tamariki.

We can’t wait to share them with you soon on www.littlelibraries.co.nz 🥳

In the meantime, we’d love to hear favourite way to engage tamariki in reading and stories 💚📚

As the year gets underway, we wanted to take a moment to reintroduce our kaupapa. 💚

Little Libraries exists to help address declining literacy rates in Aotearoa and to help tamariki fall in love with reading from the very beginning. 🥰📚

We do this by gifting beautifully designed Little Library kitsets to early childhood centres, filled with award-winning children’s books by Kiwi authors and illustrators. These stories that reflect who we are and where we come from.

This year, we’re getting ready to gift 80 more Little Libraries across the motu. We’ll also be developing new literacy resources to support kaiako and whānau along the way.

If you know an ECE centre doing beautiful mahi with tamariki, we’d love your help spreading the word 🤍

🌐 https://littlelibraries.co.nz/
📩 [email protected]

New year, a new bunch of Little Libraries looking for new homes! 🌳 📚

Last year, we gifted 120 Little Libraries to 120 early childcare centres. This year, we’ll be giving more kitset libraries to ECE centres who would really benefit. If you’d like to nominate a centre, you can send us a DM or email us at [email protected].

We prioritise centres in the highest-deprivation communities. All tamariki deserve access to beautiful, engaging books that help them fall in love with reading. 🥰

Haere mai 2026 ✨ New year, new learnings!

This year, we’ll keep growing our online resources — practical, educator-focused support to use alongside Little Libraries books and other literacy resources to bring into the kura and classrooms. Feel free to explore, bookmark or use what's useful for you and your learners.

Find them at littlelibraries.co.nz 📚

We often see the strongest literacy growth when reading stays enjoyable and relational. Summer is a chance to follow curiosity, read together and let children lead. 👭👬💕

New research from the research team at University of Canterbury highlights the powerful role of early literacy instruction in improving children’s reading and spelling outcomes.

“These findings reinforce what educators across the motu are seeing in their classrooms,” says Professor Gail Gillon, Director of the Child Well-being Research Institute at UC. “When children build strong foundational phonological awareness and word decoding skills early, their reading outcomes improve significantly over time. It’s about giving every child the opportunity to become a confident, capable reader.”

Quality teaching from the start. That's what our youngest learners deserve. 😍📚

Read the research: https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/news-and-events/news/2025/new-study-proves-power-of-early-literacy-teaching

We hear this concern from kaiako and parents everywhere: "How do I compete with screens?" Here's the truth: You can't out-stimulate a screen. But you don't have to. 💚

Stories aren't competing with screens. They offer something completely different — real connection, imagination and your irreplaceable presence.

Let tamariki choose their books. Be silly. Use voices. Encourage their questions and curiosities. Sing and dance. Reading is its own special sort of fun.

Read with the whole body! 🕺

What if choosing a book at storytime involved tip-toeing across a bridge, paddling a waka or stretching like a cat? When we engage children's bodies alongside their minds, we create multi-sensory experiences that make stories unforgettable and build physical skills at the same time. 🌉 🚣🏽‍♀️ 😸

🌍✨ Good news just in: The World Bank's latest data shows that 93% of people aged 15–24 can now read and write. That's up from 87% in 2000. In many regions, youth literacy has reached nearly universal levels.

This is one of the most successful (yet least reported) stories in global development. It reminds us why the mahi we do with our tamariki matters so much.

Every story shared, book explored and moment spent nurturing a love of reading in early childhood contributes to this incredible progress!

Let's keep building a new generation of confident readers right here in Aotearoa. 📚💚

In our recent literacy workshops, master storyteller Tanya Batt introduced us to so many inspiring ways grow children’s emergent literacy skills, including how to transform story time into an adventure!

Here’s a tip: Use imaginative play to visit the Little Library in creative ways — perhaps it's on an island, high on a mountain, in a cave or at the edge of a volcano.

Ask open-ended questions like, "I wonder where the Little Library story tree might be growing today?" Then act out the journey together as a group. Reading becomes an exciting adventure, not just a quiet activity.