Subscribe to Our Newsletter
World Book Day was created in 1995 by UNESCO as a global celebration of books and reading. It’s marked in over 100 countries all over the world, and aims to foster a love of reading in every child so they can go on to do great things. In the UK and Ireland, it’s perhaps most famous for creating greater access to reading by distributing £1 books via schools and nurseries.
In 2020, the impact of World Book Day was enormous, even though the world was still getting to grips with a new way of living and learning. They gifted over a million £1 books to young people in the UK and Ireland and encouraged 25 million minutes of shared reading! It’s also worth noting that 3 in 10 children receiving free school meals said that the title they bought using their book token was the first book that they had of their own.
The World Book Day ethos centres on the idea that it’s the act of reading, not educational background, parental income, or family circumstances, that is the biggest indicator of a child’s future success. It’s their mission to see children from disadvantaged backgrounds develop a lifelong love of books because of the huge positive changes that it can make to their quality of life. It’s all about forming the habit of reading for pleasure and finding out what weird and wonderful journeys books can take you on. This might be especially important as some of us will be spending World Book Day 2021 in lockdown.
Although it might look a little different this year, it’s still the perfect point to start a conversation with young people about reading.
World Book Day is still working with schools and nurseries to distribute their £1 Book Tokens in the UK, either via printed or digital means. There’s also a longer period to get a hold of your £1 books as tokens will be honoured past the 28th of March, or you can simply pick up them up when you go to collect essential shopping.
There are lots of ways to get involved with World Book Day, even though social contact is limited this year. Usually, we’d see students and teachers all over the world dressing up as their favourite book characters but, as lots of people are learning online this year, it might be a little tricky.
However their website still has a wide range of resources on their ‘families and schools’ hubs that can supplement a young person's route into some brilliant books. They also encourage you to Show Your Shares, which is a series of competitions where teachers, parents, and young readers can share how they’ve been getting into the books this Spring.
World Book Day is an important part of bringing reading to the forefront with young people and opening up a whole new world of learning. You can find out more about how you can get involved at their website, where there’s a wealth of information for students, parents and teachers.
Another way that you can share your love of reading is by getting involved with Succeed With Dyslexia’s D.E.A.R. for Dyslexia campaign in March. This is where we celebrate D.E.A.R. time – that's ‘Drop Everything and Read’ time – and focus on people who might struggle with reading, such as those with dyslexia or undiagnosed literacy difficulties. It’s all about making reading for pleasure something that everybody can enjoy, and sharing the knowledge and inspiration that can really make a difference when it comes to helping people with dyslexia confidently read and succeed.