MORE than 40 Peebles families marked Book Week Scotland with an afternoon of storytelling and fundraising.

Volunteers made decorations to help transform the Macfarlane Hall into an indoor winter wonderland, led by Katy and Colin Noble.

Saturday’s event was held by the Peebles Community Talking Book drive, which has already seen the town raise £10,500 for audio-books for blind and partially sighted people produced by the Royal National Institute of Blind People Scotland (RNIB).

Last year, Peebles became the first town in the UK to sponsor a ‘talking book’ as a community.

Angela Preston, fundraising manager for the charity said: “What a great way for people to celebrate Book Week Scotland, by helping to make sure the joy of reading is shared by people who can have much less choice when it comes to accessible literature.

“We’d like to especially thank Katy and Colin, Martin McCullough for loaning out the Christmas trees, the Reverend Calum MacDougall for the ornate chair he provided for the storytellers to read from, Tesco for providing the juice and crisps, and to all the volunteers who came along to help on the day. We had great feedback from the families who enjoyed the day’s event.”

A talking book for adults costs the RNIB £2,500 to professionally narrate and record – £1,500 for a children’s one.

Angela added: “These are lent out free to people with sight loss. Thanks to the fantastic support of the Peebles community we can add more titles to our library.”

With more than 25,000 books, RNIB’s talking books library is the biggest of its kind in Europe.

It sends out more than one million every year to 30,000 blind and partially sighted people in a variety of formats including audio CD, USB and digital download.