By Bryce Ives
Every winter, as the days get shorter and Melbourne turns cold, our family begins the same ritual: we pull books from the shelves, put up new reading logs on the wall, and take part in the MS Readathon.
It’s how we do winter well: reading together, asking our Yarraville neighbours to support our girls, thanking people properly, and discovering just how generous a local community can be.
Our biggest year was 2024, when our children, Neo and Doxie, read 266 books and raised $5,005. We were incredibly proud of that total, and of what it helped support. But the number is only part of the story. What stays with us is watching our girls fall in love with the magic of books, and slowly begin to understand that reading, kindness and community can all be connected.
For 2026, the bar is set high. Neo and Doxie have set themselves a target of $2,000. Doxie, who is five, has also confidently suggested we could raise $68,000. We’re not sure we will quite get there, but it’s so much fun trying.
In 2021, Neo was a one-and-a-half-year-old chatterbox, her sister Doxie was a newborn, and we were again in the middle of lockdown and a gloomy Melbourne winter. The MS Readathon suddenly felt like something that would give us joy and purpose. Laura and Lindel from the Yarraville library became our friends from afar and would have a pile of 40 books waiting for us each day. It was a way to get by and to feel like we were doing something good.
One of the first chapter books we finished with toddler Neo was The Baby-Sitters Club: Kristy’s Great Idea. Five years later, Neo is now six and reading the graphic novel series of The BSC herself. She knows the books inside out. If she ever went on the ABC’s Hard Quiz, her expert topic could easily be the intricate world of Stoneybrook, Connecticut.
This has been one of the quiet joys of the Readathon: watching a book that captured our hearts as children, capture our child’s.
More importantly, the ritual became a way for our girls to start thinking about the world around them. Through the Readathon, they began to understand health, difference, generosity and community. In that first year, Neo did not fully understand the fundraising component, but she understood that by reading lots of books, we were part of something bigger.
Most of our donations are small. We actively campaign for donations and have found that many people in our community are happy to give $20. Just as importantly, people take great joy in being asked. They like being part of the journey, and have fond memories of their own kids or grandkids doing the Readathon.
With the girls, we write or record personal thank-you messages to every donor. We make sure they know how many donations have come in, who has donated, and why saying thank you matters. We also share special moments in the campaign, such as matched funding days, when donations can go even further.
In 2023, the girls became even more involved. They baked cookies and sold them at the Yarraville Pop Up Park, using a handmade poster. That small cookie stall sparked interest from several local shops and cafes around Yarraville. A single shopkeeper’s donation created a waterfall effect. More and more came forward. Many were happy to make a $50 or $100 donation, especially when they received recognition on social media or a handmade certificate from the girls.
One of the loveliest moments came when the owner of Eleni’s, our local Greek restaurant, stopped us and said, “Have the girls reached their target Bryce? You need to go and talk to the owner of Grill’d; I’ve told him he needs to donate.”
A little bit of local rivalry can go a long way.
At its heart, the MS Readathon has given our family a way to connect two powerful ideas: the joy of reading and the joy of helping.
I recently asked Neo what she loves most about The Baby-Sitters Club.
She replied, “It encourages me to open my own club. It tells you to go on and have a turn. Ann M. Martin’s words are love. She created characters that I love.”
Out of the mouths of babes.
And really, that is the Readathon in one small answer: books giving a child permission to imagine, to lead, to try something, and to see themselves in a story.
We are not sure we will reach Doxie’s $68,000 target. But we’ll try.
You can set up your own MS Readathon quest:
www.msreadathon.org.au
Or donate to Neo and Doxie’s MS Readathon quest here:
www.msreadathon.org.au/fundraisers/katsives
