World Book Day

World Book Day is one of my favourite days of the year!! Why wouldn't it be - everyone is thinking about books! It's a great time to be working for Waterstones as children are being encouraged, either by their schools or their parents, to come into the book shop and discover books in a way they may not have done before. Many children may have never been to a book shop before, some are there all the time. Some love being there. Some have to be dragged. Reading is just like everything else. Some love it, some don't. And that applies to children too. One of the main aims of World Book Day is to encourage children to look at books, talk about books and maybe, just maybe, discover a new favourite.

Each year, several authors write short books just for World Book Day that are easy reads to get children reading. The schools hand out vouchers for children to come to the stores and buy a book with. It's a great idea!! This year's books were written by some fantastic authors...

I have bought three - Oops!! I couldn't resist... It's also a bad sign, as last year I think I only bought two... so I see the beginning of a pattern... There's no hope for next year!!

The other great thing about World Book Day is that everyone is encouraged to dress up as their favourite book characters - and as seen as I work in a book shop where all those children are being encouraged to go... it only makes sense for me to get dressed up too... right?! I was incredibly indecisive this year, but in the end, the Cheshire Cat inspiration won out...
This is what you would have found it you'd swung by the store on Thursday.

(Thing 2 - Harry Potter - Cheshire Cat)

The other thing that World Book Day encourages is #ShareAStory - the idea of reading and sharing stories with your child for just ten minutes every day. This year, I decided to use that idea to get everyone talking about their favourite stories from when they were children. So, I rounded up the guys at work and we talked about which books we remember from our childhood and got posting about it on our social media - you can check out some of them on our Instagram page - give us a like, let us know which books you remember reading too. We love to hear people talking about books, it's one of the best bits of our job!!

One for thought - my all-time favourite story from when I was younger, has to be Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll... I have several different editions of it at home, and have a track record of dressing as Alice for many occasions!!

For more information on World Book Day and the ways you can get involved, head on over to their website and join in the fun - it doesn't have to be limited to that one day - books are for life!!