IMAGINE standing up in front of a shop full of strangers on a busy Saturday afternoon and reading aloud.

Now imagine doing this as an eight-year-old child who is so severely deaf you would struggle to hear a loud radio just a few metres away.

Well this is exactly what brave Bolton schoolgirl Chloe Vinden will be doing tomorrow when she speaks up on behalf of deaf children throughout the country.

The Egerton schoolgirl will be giving a reading in Waterstones bookshop on Deansgate, Manchester, as part of a national effort to show people exactly what deaf children are capable of achieving.

Chloe attends a mainstream school, St John the Evangelist in Bromley Cross, where her teacher wears a special microphone linked to Chloe's high-tech hearing aid.

Mum Alison has watched her grow into a confident young girl who loves reading and hopes to become an actress when she becomes an adult.

Headteacher Ray McGloim believes few people would be able to tell Chloe apart from her classmates and said: "She's a smashing little girl and is doing brilliantly.

"Most adults faced with this kind of responsibility would crumble but Chloe will eat it up. She won't have any problems at all.

"She's very independent and confident -- the sort of girl who never makes excuses and just gets on with things. She wants to be involved in everything."

Chloe and a number of other deaf children from around the region will be reading with children's author Tony Ross as part of a national read round Britain day arranged by charity DELTA -- Deaf Education Through Listening and Talking.

The charity helped her parents after Chloe was diagnosed with severe hearing loss and her younger sister, Tara, as profoundly deaf.

Charity director Wendy Barnes said: "Unfortunately, people so often make assumptions about what being deaf means and many of the assumptions are out of date.

"This event gives deaf youngsters the chance to use their own voices to speak for themselves and show just how important talking, reading and education is to them, just as it is for hearing children." Neither Alison nor her husband Peter are deaf and doctors have put their children's hearing problems down to a genetic blip.

The couple have set up their own local charity, Chic, to raise money for hearing impaired children.