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This summer we were excited to bring you the 2025 Summer Reading Challenge, Story Garden. The 2025 challenge from The Reading Agency was all about adventures in nature and the great outdoors - inspiring children to tap into a world of imagination through reading and to celebrate adventure, fantasy and storytelling through nature and the great outdoors.

We encouraged you to find new books to fire your imagination and explore the magical connection between storytelling and nature. We hope you also enjoyed the free activities at the libraries.

The Summer Reading Challenge is developed by The Reading Agency and delivered in partnership with public libraries.

The Summer Reading Challenge is a FREE holiday activity for children. It’s all about reading for fun, aiming to improve children’s reading skills and confidence. The Challenge is the UK’s biggest free reading for pleasure programme for children and runs every year throughout the summer holidays!

Children’s reading skills can ‘dip’ during the long summer holidays without regular access to books and encouragement to read for pleasure. The Summer Reading Challenge helps to tackle this by regularly reaching over 700,000 children each year, motivating them to visit the library and keep reading during the holidays, which, in turn, vitally boosts children’s confidence and maintains their reading skills in preparation for the new school term.

Spotify Supports The Reading Agency’s Summer Reading Challenge 2025

In a landmark move to widen access, Spotify and a group of leading publishers joined forces to make a curated selection of Summer Reading Challenge audiobooks available for free to all! This year, families across the country could listen to selected titles from the official Summer Reading Challenge booklist via a special playlist on Spotify, with no subscription required. 

Sign up at Milton Keynes Libraries

The Summer Reading Challenge 2025 took place during the summer holidays and Milton Keynes City Libraries ran the challenge from 18 July until 6 September.

You were encouraged to sign up at your local library and read any six books of your choice to collect special stickers. After reading your six books, you were presented with a medal and a certificate of achievement - all for FREE.

The Challenge online

There was a digital platform too where you could sign up online at summerreadingchallenge.org.uk and use the book sorter to discover new books, find fun reading activities, play games, watch videos and write book reviews.

We recruited many young volunteers to help us over the summer and we hope you took the time to chat with them about the books you were reading.

Remember – the Summer Reading Challenge is about reading for fun and choosing whatever library books you like and however you’d like to read them – whether it's stories, fact books, poetry, joke books, picture books, graphic novels, audiobooks or eBooks.

[Story Garden illustrations by Dapo Adeola and logo artwork © The Reading Agency 2025.]

Milton Keynes City Council Libraries contact information

Milton Keynes Central Library, 555 Silbury Boulevard, Milton Keynes MK9 3HL