Booktober

09/10/2026

Why are we doing Booktober?

Because every story needs someone. Someone to bring a writer into a classroom.
Someone to encourage a young person who isn’t yet sure their ideas matter.
Someone to help them see their own words in print.

WestWords Schools Program Manager Sheryl Cootes spent many years as a teacher before joining WestWords. In this beautiful video, she talks about her own love of reading, why stories matter and what Booktober helps make possible for young people.

If you’re already a Bookworm, this is your reminder of what your reading and fundraising are helping support.

If you haven’t joined yet, there’s still time.

Read what you love. Raise what you can. Back someone’s beginning.

🐛 Join Booktober: booktober.org.au

30/09/2026

Join Tara Rae and the cool kids and sign up for Booktober today, www.booktober.org.au 😎 😀 ❤️😆

24/09/2026

ONE WEEK TO GO. 🐛📚

Booktober starts in one week.

So… have you signed up yet?

If the answer is “not quite”, consider this your official nudge from Chief Bookworm HQ.

Booktober is super simple: read what you love, set yourself a goal and help a young person find their voice.

You can read anything you like. Novels, audiobooks, poetry, graphic novels, children’s books, nonfiction, old favourites, maybe even recipe books (yum!). It all counts.

And this year there are a few extra reasons to wriggle in and join us:

📚 30% off all WestWords books for registered Bookworms
🎁 A free copy of A Teaspoon of Light once you receive $30 or more in donations
🏅 Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum fundraising milestones
🌿 Prizes, books, vouchers and a Hunter Valley escape up for grabs
📖 Join on your own, with your family, book club, workplace or community team

Most importantly, the funds you raise help create more opportunities for young people to meet writers, develop their own stories and see their words taken seriously. Which is the best reason surely...

And Booktober can travel too. Local bookshops, libraries, schools, book clubs and communities can form teams and help create reading and writing opportunities in their own area beyond WestWords homelands of Western Sydney and regional NSW. We can take our programs on the road with enough support!

One week to go. So no putting off until tomorrow!

👉 Sign up today at booktober.org.au

Read what you love. Help a young person find their voice.

Booktober - Sign up as a bookworm and fundraise to help kids doing it tough within the Greater Western Sydney region.

17/09/2026

Book clubs, this really is made for you.

You’re already reading, recommending, debating and occasionally defending books with unreasonable passion, so why not turn that shared love of reading into something bigger this October?

Join Booktober as a team, set your reading goals, share your page and raise funds to help young people find their voice through stories.

We’re also putting together a special Book Club Challenge, with signed copies of WestWords titles including Swallow and Sing to Me, and the chance for selected clubs to host an author visit or online Q&A.

Registered Bookworms also receive 30% off WestWords books, and you can track your October reading through Better Reading’s What Are You Reading? app.

Read together. Raise together. Make room for more stories.

Sign up and create your team at booktober.org.au

Booktober - Sign up as a bookworm and fundraise to help kids doing it tough within the Greater Western Sydney region.

14/09/2026

What if one of the simplest things we can do for reading is… make more room for it?

This morning, Booktober's Chief Bookworm Kathie Elliott-Scott was part of a much bigger conversation on ABC Sydney with Hamish Macdonald about screen time in schools, the return to pen and paper and Australia’s changing reading habits.

A listener even called in about school librarians being phased out in Newcastle - a powerful reminder that the people who connect young people with books and stories matter enormously.

At WestWords, librarians are some of our heroes.

And while the bigger policy conversations continue, there’s something every one of us can do. Read. Read one book. Read ten. Read with your kids. Read on the train. Put your phone down for 20 minutes and disappear into somebody else’s world.

Booktober isn’t about being the fastest or reading the most. It’s about making room for stories.

Join us this October.

📚 www.booktober.org.au

🎧 Hear the conversation on ABC Sydney from around 1:50: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/sydney-mornings/mornings/107135902?utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared

Keep informed, amused, entertained and inspired each weekday morning.

08/09/2026

It’s International Literacy Day.
It’s Booktober launch day.
We’re live!

Honestly, what better day to become a Bookworm?

Booktober 2026 is officially open and this year’s theme is Make Room for More Stories.

Here’s how it works:

🔖Choose what you want to read in October.
🔖Set a reading goal.
🔖Share your page.
🔖Raise funds to help young people find their voice.

No reading rules. Novels count. Audiobooks count. Graphic novels count. Children’s books count. Poetry counts. That book you started months ago and still swear you’re going to finish? Absolutely counts.

Bookworms can also track their October reading through Better Reading's What Are You Reading? app, with Bookworm rewards along the way.

Today is about the power of reading.
October is your chance to turn that love of reading into something bigger.

Become a Bookworm today - booktober.org.au