Central Library Liverpool & Extreme Reading.

A few weeks ago we had a family day in Liverpool and couldn’t resist going to take a peep at the rejuvenated Central Library. As we are all avid readers, we are also big library fans and being in a lovely old building right by the museum and art gallery we were very keen to take a look round. After coming into an impressive entrance we managed a very brief walk round the main floor but went off in search of the areas that would keep Lucas most entertained.

The Children’s ‘Discover’ section is in the old lecture theatre of the original building and it is brilliantly child friendly with colourful seating and different book displays all over the area. Lucas mostly ran around trying out all the different seats but eventually settled on a spot so we could read a few of the books. It was lovely to see so many families in there and you saw a lot of people like us had just popped in to have a quick look round but were amazed by the building. It would be great to have this as your local library; there is so much space for the children in there and I loved how accessible all the books were.

We were visiting on another mission too; as you may know my husband is a teacher and he has set up the Extreme Reading challenge in his school. The idea is to get a picture of you reading a book somewhere extreme (and safe!) and encourage more discussions about reading. To get the ball rolling with the pupils, the staff were challenged to find some different and unusual locations to read their books. I realise a library isn’t that ‘extreme’ but this library does have a beautiful roof terrace looking out over the city. It’s pretty amazing up there and we were lucky enough to get a clear day so I snapped some pictures of him reading Hound of the Baskervilles. We took a few more inside just for good measure; I think he is hoping his pictures might encourage some little visitors to the library!

I wish we could have stayed for longer but we hope to return to try and catch a children’s story time and have another explore around the building. If you are in Liverpool I would definitely recommend going in for a look.