As we wrap up our Books for Bedtime (B4B) Manual Review and update, piloted in 60 new communities across Western Australia (WA), we want to say a huge thank you to our funding partner, The Stan Perron Charitable Foundation. Without your support, this project would not have been possible. Thank you for your commitment to partnering with small charities working towards big outcomes. 

We recently completed an evaluation of the 6 month pilot in WA and are so very excited that the aim, to reintroduce bedtime reading routines back into homes or build on already existing practices, has been well and truly achieved.

Thank you to the Children’s Services, Libraries, Community Centres, Child and Parent Centres and Playgroups who participated across 60 metropolitan, regional and remote communities. Thanks to the Stan Perron Charitable Foundation grant, we were able to provide these kits free of charge to all 60 communities. 

B4B partners with services and educators working with families, who are best placed to share the information and resources. As an added benefit, these same educators and leaders can model daily shared reading routines with the children in their daily/weekly settings. Rather than overwhelm families with too much at once, B4B highlights just one meaningful daily routine to anchor shared book reading: bedtime. It also offers the knowledge, gentle encouragement, and practical resources families need to bring shared reading back into the home – or to build on the great routines they already have.

The success of this project is what PTTR is all about, mobilising communities to support families in their role as children’s first teachers. 

The short video below, developed in collaboration with the UTS Shopfront Community Program, shares practical ways families can support this from the very beginning.

Please consider sharing this post with your network. It may help reach a parent or carer who needs it at just the right time.

You can also support the work of our 110 Paint the Town Read Australia-wide communities helping more children start school ready to learn to read. 

Every share, conversation or contribution helps us reach more families. Donate here, on this webpage. Or search Paint the Town Read through your company’s Good2Give workplace giving platform. 

Our 10th National Early Literacy Conference is going to be a huge focus for us in 2026.

In partnership with Paint Camden REaD, the Conference will be held 17- 18 September in Camden NSW.
Our theme celebrates the everyday magic created when we talk, read, sing, rhyme, draw and play with children from birth. Magic that sparks connection, learning, imagination and lifelong literacy.

Watch this space and follow us on Facebook to receive more updates.

Want to make a meaningful donation this Financial Year? We’re looking for donations to help us print our Aboriginal English booklet ‘How to feed your bub’s brain’. Can you help us?

Please use the ‘Donate’ button on this page.

From West to East PTTR is firing in 2025. Here are two examples:

In WA Paint Mandjoogoordap REaD launched in February, with the arrival of their mystery egg.
Widi the Penguin from City of Rockingham’s Paint the Town REaD came over to lend a hand. Welcome!
https://www.facebook.com/PaintMandjoogoordapREaD/

And over in the East, in partnership with PWC, the How to Feed Your Baby’s Brain movie was launched, created by the very creative students from UTS’s Shopfront.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/snjdamdz8r6upvxzktvvg/PTTR-final.mp4?rlkey=6aa9ml46lm2n6atw26yca9bmo&dl=0

All of us at PTTR want to thank everyone across Australia who has supported reading, talking, singing, rhyming and drawing with children from birth this year.

Whether you be our generous funders, partner organisations, our 1000s of local volunteers, and mums, dads, grandparents, big brothers and sisters – thank you. You are changing children’s lives!

We hope you all can enjoy a time of slowing down and reflection in this Season….and find a book for yourself under the Christmas Tree.

Justine Roberts, who took over as our Executive Director this year, is leading us into 2025 with enthusiasm and passion.

Paint Liverpool REaD have launched their bilingual children’s book (Dharug and English) – ‘Where is Bayagin’s Brother?’

Written and illustrated by Leanne Redpath, and translated by Rhiannon Wright, the book tells the story of two baby bayagin (leaf tailed geckos). It also introduces children to the importance of both family and place.

We are thrilled!

Thank you Your Excellency Linda Hurley for being our Patron for the past 5 years.

You have been absolutely amazing. Whether online, in a movie or in person your generosity of spirit, time and enthusiasm has been incalculable. 

From when you invited the PTTR Board to Afternoon Tea at Admiralty House in Dec 2019, then reached out to us in COVID online numerous times, wrote and recorded the Paint the Town REaD song, launched our REaD with Me at Home COVID Campaign online, ‘visited’ Wattle Grove Early Childhood Centre after the children sent you a recording of them singing your song, through to opening our 2021 Conference in Bankstown and then our 2023 Conference in Parkes, you have been there for us! And finally the wonderful Morning Tea at Admiralty House in December, 2023 celebrating PTTR reaching 100+ communities.

Thank you too for involving your wonderful husband, our then Governor General. His presence and quiet humour really added to those events.

Now more than ever

It was so fitting that during Reconciliation Week, we received a copy of The Ninti Way, a bilingual children’s book in Pitjantjatjara and English. This book was produced by the APY Lands’ Paint the Lands REaD, Black and Yellow. It tells the story of Papa the Dog from Fregon, as he takes a journey across Anangu Lands visiting tjitji tjuta (children) and their families with their Paint the Lands REaD, Black and Yellow mascots.

Now more than ever, PTTR communities are collaborating with local Elders to create bilingual books. The Ninti Way is PTTR’s 2nd bilingual book in Aboriginal Language and English. More are to come. We shall keep you posted.

To celebrate 10 years of PTTR in WA, the WA Governor, His Excellency the Honourable Chris Dawson, and Mrs Dawson, invited representatives from WA’s PTTR communities and supporters to morning tea at Government House on Thursday 4 April.

It was so very special to have funders, members of Parliament (Local, State and Federal), from both sides of the house present and early childhood peak WA representatives celebrate with us.

WA’s PTTR mascots stole the show, led by Red, the Super Reading Roo from Paint the Swan REaD, where we began in WA in ten years ago.

This was followed by a lunch at WA State Parliament, hosted by Mark Folkard, MLA, member for Burns Beach. Thank you Mark.