New generations of avid young bookworms will be able to engross themselves in many a good read, thanks to an innovative project about to be launched countywide, writes Phil Clee.

The Oxfordshire Play Bus Scheme, set up some 21 years ago to boost recreation facilities for children in areas where play opportunities are sparse, has set up its latest learning initiative with the help of cash from the Lottery Charities Fund.

With a boost of 18,000, the scheme plans to set up 60 collection points at local schools where youngsters donate old books for the future delight of others.

It is one of three child-oriented projects in the county, announced this week, to benefit from an injection of Lottery cash totalling more than 250,000. The lion's share of the cash, some 180,000, is going to the Sunshine Centre based at the Neithrop School on the Bretch Hill estate in Banbury.

This will take the form of a renewed three-year grant to provide extra staff for the established after-school and holiday activities club, which will now offer weekend facilities as well as care for youngsters with behavioural problems.

Another Oxfordshire group, the Shepherd's Hill Pre-School, which operates daily at The Dovecote on the Greater Leys estate in east Oxford, also receives 61,500 in response to its first grant application.

This will provide a full-time care assistant for five youngsters representing a third of its daily intake of 16 three-to-five-year-olds who have special needs.

The Play Bus Scheme's grant may be the smallest of the three awards, but it will be well-used by Niz Smith, its co-ordinator for the past two-and-a-half years, and her four colleagues.

Their first two Lottery grants went purely on revenue funding to keep the scheme going. But having become established, they thought now was the time to branch out on a whole new project.

Niz said: "We've got 57 schools involved as collection points for books which have been enjoyed and outgrown, and we'll be buying crates for the children to drop their offerings into.

"We're absolutely over the moon with this latest award. We'd been thinking about it for some time, but it's nice to be able to make things happen."