North Kensington charity gives away a million books in a year

A children’s charity based on Golborne Road has given away a million books in the space of a year, a milestone marked this week when the millionth book was handed to a child at a Fit for Life Youth session in North Kensington. (Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, 12 August 2026)

The Children’s Book Project takes new and gently used books donated by families and publishers and passes them on to children who own few or none, so that a household can build a home library without buying one. Its own running total, published on its website and updated as books go out, stood at 2,778,400 books gifted when we checked on 13 August. The charity says it supports more than 65,000 families a year. (Children’s Book Project)

How fast that is, by the charity’s own record

The scale of the change is easier to see against the charity’s own history. It recorded its one millionth book in June 2023. Reaching that first million took years. The second million, and the 778,400 on top of it, have come in the roughly three years since, with a million of those in the last twelve months alone.

The council has been a landlord to that growth rather than a funder of it. It gave the charity its first dedicated premises on Kensal Road, then supported a move to a larger site on Golborne Road as demand rose.

Liberty Venn, founder and chief executive, said: “A million books means a million opportunities to put a book into a child’s hands and say this is yours. You deserve it.”

Cllr Catherine Faulks, the council’s lead member for family and children’s services, said: “Behind the impressive numbers of today’s milestone is the reality that dozens of families now have an extra few books on their shelves in time for a bedtime story.”

What it means for you

If you have books your children have outgrown, this is the nearest place to take them. The charity’s whole model runs on donated books in readable condition, and its sorting operation is on Golborne Road rather than at the far end of London. Check what it can currently accept on its own website before filling the car, because what a book bank needs changes with what it already has on the shelves.

If you run a school, nursery or community group in the borough, you can be on the receiving end. The charity distributes through settings as well as directly to families, and 65,000 families a year is a distribution network, not a shop counter.

The number to watch is the counter, not the milestone. The total on the charity’s homepage moves as books go out, so it is a live measure of whether this pace holds rather than a figure fixed on the day of an announcement.

Golborne Road sits at the north end of the borough. Other things to do and places to visit in the area are on our things to do in Kensington page.