One of just 30 'heroes', Malcolm Wright, managing director of ITVSignpost, was presented with his award last month by the primeminister's wife Sarah Brown at a special ceremony held at No 10 DowningStreet.
Mr Wright said, 'It was such an honour to receive the award and berecognised for a project that I have put my heart and soul into.'
Every reading hero was given 1,000 special edition copies of MichaelRosen's Going on a Bear Hunt, to be distributed to schools and charitiesof their choice. Copies will be given to new settings who register onthe site and schools and charities in the north-east.
The animated website hosts popular children's stories accessible insound, text, vision and sign language. It was set up in response to whatwas seen as a growing literacy gap between deaf and hearing children atschool, to improve the number of resources for deaf children.
Mr Wright started to create the site in August last year, working withconsultant Mary Briggs, the founder of Seven Stories, a children'sreading and exhibition centre in Newcastle. He aimed to build a targetlist of books to use on the site royalty-free.
Mr Wright said, 'We went to eight publishers who had a large number ofbooks we wanted. Walker Publishing has been fantastic, and we now havethe rights to over 200 books'.
By 2011 the website expects to have over 300 animated stories availablefree online, with a new book added to the site each week.
Future plans include catering for babies, introducing pop-up books andfeaturing extracts of stories for children nine years old and over.
Signedstories.com will be celebrating World Storytelling Day on 20March. The theme this year is 'neighbours' and the site will feature thebook Six Dinner Sid by Inga Moore.
- Further information: www.signedstories.com
