With Passion, Communication, Courtesy and Teamwork Anything is Possible...

The area of the United Kingdom is approximately 94,060 square miles.
The straight-line distance from Land's End to John O' Groats is 603 miles, though the traditional distance by road is 874 miles.  That is a lot of distance for our merry little band to cover.  Can we do it? Or have we set ourselves an impossible task?

We know we will succeed for four important reasons. 

1. We have passion for our chosen cause.  It is ingrained in us all, because in our childhood we were those reluctant readers, and these books changed us.  We are only too aware of the very different life we could be living now if we had not embraced reading.  
2. At school we were taught to communicate and can express that passion and convince others to follow our cause.  They made this possible. 
3. Our parents bought us up to be well-mannered and polite, never rude or abrupt 
4. We have the ability to work as a team and draw others to our cause.

In short we will politely communicate our passion until people offer to help.  Sounds impossible?  Read on and be convinced…

Our first donation was a symbolic one for one of our team - to put the book that had first made him fall in love with reading back into the school he first read it in.  For our second donation we wanted to make a statement.  We wanted to prove to you just what can be achieved by politely communicating our passion for this cause.  Ladies and Gentlemen we are so very proud to announce to you our second delivery of books here:

It is Al Shahama Secondary Girls School in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Our second donation travelled a little bit further that the first and it did so at ZERO COST to us. 
 

We fully intend that the majority of these books will be distributed to UK schools, with the exception of some that we hope to get out to our members in the USA.  However, we could not resist proving to you all what CAN be achieved when you have the ability to communicate your passion for a good cause, politely request assistance and work as a team.  

The school sent us a wonderful PowerPoint of thanks that brought a tear to our eye.
Thank you Al Shahama School.  We are so glad to have made you part of our project.  Here is what they sent:

Children of the world - Work hard in your Literacy lessons and develop your communication skills. With them you can achieve ANYTHING!

We are Target Who.  We have placed books in our first two schools over 3400 miles apart … and we have only just begun.  

 

Target Who would like to thank Amy Kranz and the Staff and Students at Al Shahama Secondary Girls School in Abu Dhabi for making our second delivery truly special

Spider-Pig!

Ladies and Gentlemen, We would like to introduce to you Spider-Pig!

  

 

Spider-Pig is the library mascot in Forrester High School in Edinburgh.  Librarian Julie Sutherland mentioned he was currently in the guise of ‘Spider-Who’ “dressed as The Doctor – he’s wearing a bow tie, is holding a sonic screwdriver and is reading a manual on his greatest enemies”.  We just had to ask for a photo to share with you.

She also told us “Spider-Who does change depending on displays or complete whimsy on my part. He’s been a zombie and has had some very nasty accidents for Halloween; he’s been Harry Potter, Captain Underpants, a doctor (complete with surgical mask) and a baby (with a nappy on). He has sunbathed on a deckchair for summer reading promos too. Our careers advisor made trotter prints and they turn up overnight across the library furniture / ceiling for pupils to discover what he gets up to in the evenings…   It gets a lot of chat going.”

A lot of other teachers have mentioned how Doctor Who has been used in their schools.  We’ve been told of lessons, displays and one school even has a full size Dalek in their library!  We have added Spider-Who to our ‘Doctor Who in Schools’ Photo album, which you will find linked in our right navigation menu.  If you have any photos from your school we can share please send them in.

A Library Display in Carluke High School, South Lanarkshire. Photo courtesy of Linda Martin

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are Target Who?
We are a small group of Doctor Who fans who won an eBay auction for over 11,000 vintage Doctor Who children’s books.  The books are still in mint condition, having lain in storage somewhere for over 30 years.  We are not sure yet exactly how many we have, but estimate the number to be closer to 14,000.  However as we open each package we sometimes sadly discover that damp has got in and a number of books are not in readable condition anymore and require recycling.

What are Target Who doing with the books?
We are passionate about children’s reading.  These are the very books that turned many of us from reluctant readers into bookworms back in the 1970s and 1980s.
We are aware that schools have shrinking budgets due the global recession.
We are aware that schools have many children reluctant to read in their classes.
We are aware that the current generation LOVE Doctor Who.
We want to put a SMALL number of books (6 to 8) into as many school libraries as we can possibly reach.

How will Target Who achieve this?
We will achieve all this using three of the most important things that teachers are instilling in their pupils around the country - Courtesy, Communication and Teamwork.  Simply put we will communicate our passion and importance for children’s reading, asking politely for help and enlisting the aid of friends, family, teachers and others around the UK to reach our aims.
This may seem an impossible task, but we are confident that by the end of the year we will have put books in schools that stretch from Cornwall to the Scottish Highlands. 

Who are the books suitable for?
The books are suitable for both Junior and Senior school libraries.  We have a small number that are only suitable for Senior schools. We will send you a random selection of books, but will try and send books by several different authors, so your pupils can experience different writing styles

How do I nominate my school for books?
If you are a member of staff at a school simply email targetwho@virginmedia.com
Please let us know the FULL address of your school and a contact name and we will reply as soon as possible.  The email is monitored throughout the day and you should hear back within 24 hours.
If you could also mention the age range of your pupils it would help in the selection of titles.
If you are not a staff member at a school, please do not email.  Tell your local school about us so they can consider our offer.  We will only add schools to our distribution list if we are sure they want our books and the schools themselves contact us.
How can my school help?
Any help you can give us in our task would be gratefully received.  Maybe your school could act as a local hub where we can deliver books to for collection by other local schools that have also signed up.  This would enable less deliveries to be made by us and therefore speed us distribution. 

What is the purpose of the blog?
The blog is being written to tell our story as it unfolds.  It is not a Doctor Who blog - it is a children’s literacy blog.  It is being carefully written to be accessible to all - teachers, parents, children, everyone!  There are lots of depressing stories in the news, and we hope that what we are striving to achieve will be an inspirational read.  We hope people will look in regularly to see what we have been up to and how and where the books have gone.  We have big plans and many surprises ahead and promise we will put a smile readers faces if you follow us.

We are also open to work with teachers if our blog can encourage their pupils’ literacy.  For example, should one of your pupils write a review of one of our books, we will gladly publish it on the blog.  (Hopefully they will have enjoyed the book!)  Please feel free to suggest other ways in which you can use us to inspire your children.

I’m a Doctor Who Fan.  Can I have some of the books for myself?
No, we’re sorry. We thought long and hard about this and our thinking is this; a book in a fan’s collection is read once, maybe not at all.  We want these books to be read again and again, so we are only putting them in school libraries or similar places where a steady stream of children can constantly discover them.

I’m a Doctor Who Fan too.  Can I help?
We hope we will inspire you to join our cause to support children’s literacy in schools.  Do you have Doctor Who books in your house that you will never read again?  Wouldn’t they be better in a school library where they can be enjoyed by young readers again and again?  Could you return to your childhood school with a gift of Doctor Who books?  We can’t think of a better way of celebrating Doctor Who’s 50^th Anniversary than we, the childhood fans of yesteryear, freely putting a Doctor Who book into the school libraries of the new generation of fans.  Will you join us?  We are not asking you to buy 14,000 books and distribute them all over the UK like we are doing.  Just buy as many as you can afford and give them to the schools you can reach.  Together we can help encourage an entire generation to fall in love with reading. 

What is this pin map?
We have created a pin map that marks the location of every school we manage to reach.  We have also created a second pin map to record the locations of every book those fans donate in support of us - providing you tell us where.  The pin map can be accessed from the menu on the right hand side of the blog

What are the photo albums and what is in them?
We have three photo albums set up that can be accessed from the right hand menu. ’General Photos’ contains pictures of our books as they move around the country.  ‘DW in Schools’ will contain photos of displays, mascots or examples of how Doctor Who is used in schools to teach the curriculum.  ‘Donations’ will contain any photos of people donating books either from, or in support of Target Who.  If you are donating books and want to send us a photo of you stood outside the school with the books we will add them here.

Where are the readers’ comments on the blog?
Every viewer has the facility to add comment to each individual blog post.  There are two ways of accessing them.  Firstly you can click on the title of an individual post.  This will then just display that post will all comments underneath.  The Second way is to click on “comments” at the end of the blog entry

How do I add a comment?
This is far easier than it first seems.    First enter your comment in the large white text box.  Blogger now defaults to posting using your blogger login.  YOU DO NOT NEED A BLOGGER LOGIN TO POST A COMMENT!  Click on the downward pointing triangle at the end of the ‘Comment as’ box and select ‘Name/URL’.  You are given two boxes to complete.  Enter your name in the first, but the second is optional.  You don’t have to enter a URL and can leave this blank.  Press publish and your comment will be added.