MORE than 200 children had the chance to make their own language - and fill a unique dictionary.

Youngsters aged five to 12 joined Dr Susan Rennie, author of The Guid Freendly Giant, the BFG in Scots, at The Mitchell Library and The Burrell Collection to create their very own Scots Guddlefank dictionary.

The lucky word-smiths, all participants in this year’s Summer Reading Challenge, crowded in to the venues to concoct their very own language as part of the epic finale to this year’s event.

Archie Graham, chairman of Glasgow Life, said: “This year, 3943 young people took part in Glasgow’s Tesco Bank Summer Reading Challenge, a record breaking number for the city and an increase of 27 per cent on last year’s challenge.

“The summer holidays are often times when children’s literacy levels can dip, so I’m delighted that so many young Glaswegians have turned to their local library for support to help them to read more and discover many different books this summer."

Throughout the summer, the Roald Dahl-themed reading challenge – The Big Friendly Read - phizz-whizzed into the city’s libraries, encouraging children from across the city to get to grips with tall tales and wonderful new worlds.

Run by national charity The Reading Agency, the Summer Reading Challenge Scotland involves children joining the library and reading six or more books of their choice during the summer holidays.

A pre-four challenge also invited the youngest Glaswegians to get involved, by sharing books with their parents around Dahl’s themes of adventure, invention, mischief and good old friendship at any of Glasgow’s 33 libraries.

Dr Rennie said: “Reading Roald Dahl is a wonderful way to introduce children to the creative possibilities of language, both in English and Scots.

"Dahl invented hundreds of new words, and in creating ‘guddlefank’ - the Scots version of gobblefunk - I’ve followed his methods in blending parts of familiar Scots or English words together, to make words that are new but still understandable.”

Meanwhile, more than 100 children headed to Hillhead and Barmulloch Libraries for an interactive animation workshop with graphic artist Adam Murphy.