Thursday 5 March - World Book Day 2009

For ideas on what schools can do for WBD visit Reading Connects
For information on WBD visit www.worldbookday.com or call the World Book Day helpline: 01634 729810, wbd@education.co.uk

Spread the Word is the adult strand of WBD. The campaign focuses on adults recommending books to each other via postcards and emai. In 2008 the public will be asked to vote on a longlist of 100 titles of fiction by living authors who have not won a major award. Ten shortlisted titles will then become the focus of Spread the Word: Talk about Books reading groups which will be held in libraries and bookshops on or around WBD. For more information, to add your vote, or enter the competition, visit http://www.worldbookday.com/
Quick Reads is a major initiative from leading publishers, booksellers and writers that was launched in 2006.
Quick Reads 2008

For more information view details on at www.niace.org.uk/QuickReads/

An 'Apprentice'-style reality TV show which will turn one of six celebrities into a crime author, mentored by Minette Walters and published by Pan Macmillan, in celebration of World Book Day 2008.

"Murder Most Famous", will be broadcast on BBC2 during the week of World Book Day. The series will be broadcast in five daily 45-minute episodes, and pits six celebrities - dancer Brendan Cole, actresses Sherrie Hewson and Angela Griffin, former tabloid editor Kelvin MacKenzie, presenter Matt Allwright and gardener Diarmuid Gavin - against each other.

They will be mentored by Walters, who will set a series of challenges to inspire the celebrities' daily writing tasks. Training will include dog tracking, resisting a violent attack, an autopsy, crime scene investigation, interrogation techniques and rapid pursuit of a suspect. Walters will judge the celebrities' writing efforts and eliminate one candidate each day.

The winner will turn their plot and central characters into a novel, to be published with Pan as a Quick Read on WBD 2009, in conjunction with the BBC's adult literacy campaign RaW. The proceeds will go towards BBC Children in Need.

Previous World Book Day campaigns

• World Book Day survey results of top ten books we can't live without (01.03.07)
• Pass it on by postcard campaign underway (16.02.05)
• Spread the word campaign for World Book Day 2005 (Nov 04)
• JK Rowling launches World Book Day online festival 2004 (Jan 2004)
• Children linked by children's rights on World Book Day 2003 (28.02.03)
• Reading Survey for World Book Day 2001 (01.03.01)

World Book Day survey results of top ten books we can't live without

The Mirror has reported that Pride and Prejudice has been voted the book the nation cannot live without. A survey to mark World Book Day 2007 showed 20% of those surveyed would put Jane Austen's classic at number 1. Classic works also dominated the rest of the chart:
1) Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2) The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3) Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4) Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5) To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6) The Bible
7) Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8) 1984 - George Orwell
9) His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10) Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

(Mirror, 1 March 2007)

Pass it on by postcard campaign underway

As World Book Day preparations heat up, postcards for recommending your favourite read are due to come tumbling out of virtually every publication in Britain until March 3.

The organisers, whose mission is to raise the profile of reading and book buying and borrowing, call this harnessing the power of recommendation and are focusing it on a single day. "Over 90% of leisure purchases, films, music, books, are influenced by the word of mouth, and this seems to be truest of all for books," they said. "Many big successes in the book world have been those whose reputation has spread like wildfire from person to person. Recent examples range from Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code to Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves."

(Guardian, 16 February 2005)

World Book Day 2005 aims to harness the power of reading recommendation. World Book Day will flood the nation with free postcards which will be available in bookshops, libraries, coffee shops and newspapers. The postcards are designed to encourage people to use them to recommend a book to a friend.
Click here to send an e-card

The big, and so far unexplored, opportunity is to engage adults in WBD, to draw them into the campaign so that they get really involved themselves, not just through their children. The WBD team has been working on this angle through an Adult Initiative committee led by John Bond of HarperCollins. The idea is to flood the nation with postcards recommending good reads. On one side is an image; on the other a space in which recommendations can be written and then sent to a friend.

(Bookseller, 18 June 2004)

In 2003 there were three quarters of a million hits to the site from 61 countries on World Book Day itself, with a second surge to the site on 23 April, the date World Book Day is celebrated in other countries.

The Festival is funded by Arts Council England and delivered by The Reading Agency on behalf of the Festival partners: World Book Day, The Reading Agency, Resource: Council for Museums, Archives & Libraries, Society of Chief Librarians, and Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals.

(January 2004)

A book on children's rights will link young readers from four continents on World Book Day. A Life Like Mine, published in association with Unicef (the United Nations Children's Fund) looks at the lives of 18 children around the world to see how far the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is being met.

Topics covered include access to food, water, education and health care and children's right to play, to have free expression and be protected in wartime.

The charity Book Aid International has set up activities based around the book
linking UK public libraries with partners in 10 developing countries. Schools and library-based reading groups for teenagers will take part in story-telling events and debates. They will prepare letters and pictures for their partners overseas.

A Life Like mine is published by Dorling Kindersley in association with Unicef, £14.99. http://uk.dk.com/static/cs/uk/11/features/lifelikemine/index.html and www.bookaid.org and www.worldbookday.com for details of World Book Day events.

(TES, 28 February 2003)