Have you ever wondered if there was a day in the year dedicated to the Holy Grail of stories - Books?
Yes! 23rd April 2018 marks World Book Day, UNESCO International Day of the Book, and death anniversary of esteemed authors William Shakespeare, Miguel Cervantes and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega.
Established in 1995, it marks a day to celebrate books, a day to share stories and a day to start changing lives through the love of reading.
Reading for pleasure is a globally recognised indicator in a huge range of social issues from poverty to mental health, yet in England alone, 36% of people don’t regularly read (DCMS, 2015).
At Gnome & Bow, we are advocates of literacy because we strongly believe in the influence of books and power of reading. We hope that through our goods that are inspired by stories, we can continue to capture imagination and impact lives.
Let's dive in to see the what this special day has in store.
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BOOK GIVING
Books are conversations. Illustration by Jose Rosero.
The approach for this day apart from the celebrations is the giving of books to targeted groups of people including less confident adult readers or those who don’t read for pleasure, isolated and vulnerable older people, people in prisons, people with mental health issues, parents and vulnerable pregnant women, and young people who don’t read for pleasure.
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BOOK TOKENS
Hatchards Piccadilly, London's oldest bookshop
In the United Kingdom and Ireland, thanks to National Book Tokens and lots of lovely book publishers and booksellers, World Book Day, in partnership with schools all over the country, will be distributing more than 15 million £1 World Book Day book tokens to children and young people. That’s almost one for every child/young person under 18.
Find a participating bookstore here.
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BOOK AWARDS
World Book Day Award aims to promote a different approach to reading for pleasure through art installations. This year’s theme, “Flying high with Reading" saw over 70,000 children reaching for the stars and bringing creativity to a whole new.
Here are some of our favorites snippets from the winning team inspired by space:
Welcome to an outer space of books, where your imagination is boundless
Each planet represents a book genre
"Books encourage your imagination to take flight, the books we read assist us to fly high into our own world of novels, to become writers and to use our ideas and imagination to create our own stories. Reading helps us shoot for the stars! This is when we realised we should choose a space theme. What’s higher than space? Therefore, we decided to explore the theme. We thought about rockets, flying spaceships, astronauts, stars and planets. Reading is like a shooting star that boosts us higher, to better and greater; it brings colours to our lives, wonderful, beautiful rainbows of imagination."
(Written by Nanaba, Junior, Deborah and Angel in Year 6)
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BOOK IMPACT
We often take for granted the privilege of literacy and books. While books serve to educate or enrich our lives, they also have the ability to change lives. That's the mission of Book Aid International.
We found the story of Rahmatu particularly moving and poignant.
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BOOK NIGHT
Spinning off from World Book Day, World Book Night is for adults and night is also when we traditionally think about celebrations.
Run by The Reading Agency, it brings together a powerful collaboration of national partners – publishers, printers, libraries, booksellers, private donors, trusts and foundations – to inspire more people to read.
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BOOK ART
To sum up this post, nothing beats the sheer enjoyment of reading, but in the essence of time, we feel these will do the trick to get you going and capture your imagination.
Moving forward with books. Illustration by Dave Cutler.
On the wings of books. Illustration by Jungho Lee.
You are what you read. Illustration by Gürbüz Doğan Ekşioğlu.
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HAPPY WORLD BOOK DAY!
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