North East Children’s Indie Book Fest 2026

It’s incredibly exciting to be organising the North East Children’s Indie Book Fest with Crear Publishing Ltd. It will be held at the wonderful Field & Fodder in Bearpark on 25th July 2026, and it promises to be a fantastic day for families.

We’ll have lots of brilliant authors, live readings, fun activities and plenty more besides. It’s going to be one of those days where imagination runs wild and stories take centre stage.

With children’s literacy levels being so poor in the North East, we at Crear Publishing feel passionately about encouraging children to read. Yes, playing computer games can be fun. Of course it can. But nothing, absolutely nothing, is as rewarding as picking up a book and being transported to another world.

Books feed the imagination in a truly unique way. They stretch young minds, build confidence and, I believe, even help develop social skills. Stories allow children to step into someone else’s shoes, to understand different perspectives and to see the world through fresh eyes.

As a child it was difficult being a twin and the less academic one. I also had a bad stutter, which meant I often kept quiet, worried about saying the wrong thing or being ridiculed. Reading became my lifeline. Within the pages of a book, I found freedom. I found confidence. I found worlds where I could be anything and go anywhere.

It helped me in a way nothing else could.

I’ve been a lifelong reader ever since, and I want children today to discover just how extraordinary books really are. They are not boring pages of paper. They are adventures waiting to unfold, dynamic characters bursting into life and a million different lives ready to be lived.

We all have our favourite characters from literature, don’t we? And the beautiful thing is that we all imagine them differently. Unlike television or film, where we’re presented with actors and ready-made images, books ask us to build the faces ourselves. To create the landscapes. To decide how a character smiles, walks or speaks.

That act of imagining is powerful. It’s creative. It’s personal.

And that’s why this festival matters so much to us.

On 25th July 2026, we’ll be celebrating stories, creativity and the sheer magic of reading. We hope families will join us for a day filled with authors, inspiration and the kind of joy that only a really good book can bring.

Because somewhere in that crowd could be a child who just needs one story to change everything.

And if we can help spark that love of reading, then it will all have been worth it.