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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)
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
In 2005 the classic WBD package of books, Book Tokens
and school packs will be repeated, but the schools activity
will be tuned to better meet the particular needs of the
secondary, primary and pre-school sectors. For example,
the secondary school resource pack may be provided online
and the money saved used to produce a pre-school resource
pack.
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)
World Book Day, 4 March 2004, sees the launch of
the second World Book Day Online Festival, with films,
live web chats, discussion forum and online poll for all
ages, from the under 5s to adults. Featured authors this
year are: JK Rowling, Kes Gray, Nick Sharratt, Minette
Walters, Sarah Waters, Debi Gliori, Jamila Gavin, Jacqueline
Wilson, Benjamin Zephaniah, Jackie Kay, Nick Hornby, Anthony
Horowitz and Tony Hawks. All events will be instantly
archived, making the Festival an ongoing resource throughout
the year. The site will also contain downloadable schools/children’s
resources and readers’ group resources, linked to
the Festival events, and these will be available from
the Festival holding page in the run-up to World Book
Day.
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)
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