World Book Day is a fun charity event held every year in the United Kingdom and Ireland on the first Thursday in March. On World Book Day, every child in full-time education in the UK is given a voucher to spend on a book.
Feature by Jean Hill
The event is an addition to the original global World Book Day introduced by UNESCO to promote reading, publishing, and copyright, and widely observed on 23rd April.
Like a piece of evocative music, the best loved books illuminate those childhood years. We always read to our children at bedtime. My son memorised stories word for word. So no cutting to the chase! The Gigantic Turnip comes to mind. So many wonderful stories have stayed with me and will be enjoyed and relived with my grandson.
Our daughter, now editor of His & Hers, read Enid Blyton: every book she ever wrote, I believe. She used to return books to the second hand shop where she had originally bought them and negotiate to buy more books.
A lovely way of celebrating the day is for children to dress up as their favourite book character. I fondly remember fancy dress parties when I became Minnie Mouse and another became the Mad Hatter. And we were grown-ups!
Good books, and there are so many children’s classics, ignite the imagination, open up new worlds and explore challenges, uncertainties, fears and similar strong emotions with true empathy. It is a magical way of exploring the world of the imagination. To be able to keep that childhood wonder and excitement is a gift.
So some of my all-time favourites: it is a long list and will still have glaring gaps!
Grimms’ Fairy Tales brought us Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and the Gingerbread Man (and so many more tales).
Noddy Goes to Toyland by Enid Blyton (and many more stories by this author)
The Secret Garden by Frances Burnett
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (and Through the Looking Glass)
The Maggie B by Irene Haas
In the Night Kitchen and Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond
Charlotte’s Web by E B White
Winnie the Pooh by A A Milne
Tales of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Parle
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
Peter Pan by James Matthew Barrie
Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney
The Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Also, we’ve regularly featured popular local author, Natalie Reeves Billing, who’s on a mission to introduce the love of reading to the next generation.
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