World Book Day: Cassie Chadderton puts ambition to create “generations of readers” at the centre of bold new vision
Charity’s CEO outlines 2021-25 strategy to inspire even more children and families to read for pleasure, particularly those from disadvantaged and low-income backgrounds
Campaign launches with strapline Changing lives through a love of books and shared reading
World Book Day titles for 2021 announced, with new work from Julia Donaldson, Katherine Rundell, Humza Arshad, and Tom Fletcher
The Bookseller Children’s Conference — Cassie Chadderton, World Book Day CEO, used today’s keynote speech to tell publishers, booksellers, authors, illustrators, librarians and readers how World Book Day 2021 will go even further to transform lives through shared reading, and why “it’s more important than ever that we get it right”.
“We are proud of what World Book Day has become, with the support of its partners in book selling and publishing,” Chadderton told delegates at the virtual Children’s Conference. “We can now do even more to bring the transformative power of reading for pleasure to more children.”
Chadderton, who was appointed CEO of the charity last year, announced three key initiatives that will use World Book Day’s high profile to act as a trusted route to book discovery for children and families, driving interest and engagement online and into bookshops and libraries, and give World Book Day more opportunities to present a wide and diverse range of titles, authors and illustrators to all children and families.
The World Book Day Book Club will be held monthly throughout the year. A filmed event presented on the charity’s website, it will offer an opportunity for authors and illustrators to answer questions from children (submitted in advance) and chat with the event’s host. The World Book Day Book Club will be aimed at an 5+ and 9+ audience (alternating each month). The first book for the Club, also announced by Cassie Chadderton today, will be Sharna Jackson’s High Rise Mystery.
A World Book Day Share a Story Corner will be created on the World Book Day website to encourage families to read together from the earliest years. Held every quarter, Share A Story Corner will present engaging reading content for families with early-years and younger readers to use for reading together at home.
World Book Day will present clearer links to public and school libraries. Working together, World Book Day and libraries will help promote access to books and encourage engagement with book shops and the wider world of books and reading, particularly with less engaged readers and disadvantaged communities.
Sharna Jackson said: “I’m so excited that High-Rise Mystery is the very first book for the brand new World Book Day Book Club. I love World Book Day, and now we have reasons to celebrate over a whole year? Awesome. The more reading we all do, the better off we are. Reading is so special: being able to imagine and visit different places, meet new characters and discover different points of view is so fun, and also important. The more we can empathise with each other, the better the world will be.”
The 2021 World Book Day Books
What the Ladybird Heard Play Book by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Lydia Monks (Macmillan)
There’s a Wolf in Your Book! by Tom Fletcher, illustrated by Greg Abbott (Puffin Books)
Luna Loves World Book Day by Joseph Coelho, illustrated by Fiona Lumbers (Andersen Press)
Gigantosaurus Dino-Spot by Jonny Duddle (Bonnier Books UK)
Planet Omar: Operation Kind by Zanib Mian, illustrated by Nasaya Mafaridik (Hachette)
Protect the Planet by Jess French, illustrated by Aleesha Nandhra (DK)
The River Whale by Sita Brahmachari (Hachette)
Skysteppers by Katherine Rundell (Bloomsbury)
Little Badman and the Radioactive Samosa by Humza Arshad and Henry White, illustrated by Aleksei Bitskoff (Puffin Books)
Football School: 20 Fantastic Football Stories by Alexander Bellos and Ben Lyttleton (Walker)
Skullduggery Pleasant: Apocalypse Kings by Derek Landy (HarperCollins)
Kill Joy by Holly Jackson (Egmont)
Irish title: Lily and the Lissadell Ghost by Judi Curtin (The O’Brien Press)
Welsh title: Forthcoming
Rob Biddulph returns as the World Book Day illustrator for a third year, and the emblematic bookmarks are now reading and sharing books together. Biddulph said: “Being the official World Book Day illustrator for the last two years has been a career highlight, so when I was asked to continue for another twelve months I said yes immediately. Encouraging children to read for pleasure is of utmost importance, more so now than ever, and I’m thrilled and honoured to be a part of the fabulous team that make this happen.”
To make World Book Day even more accessible to its different audience strands, the charity has further re-designed its website, with an updated colour palate and a more user-friendly structure — all conceived to support shared reading and create online reading communities.
Stephen Lotinga, Chair of World Book Day and CEO of the Publishers Association, said: “In the context of widening social and economic disparities, further exposed by Covid-19, it will be even more important for World Book Day to be a shared moment to encourage children to build the life-long habit of reading for pleasure, and to benefit from the improved life chances this brings them.”
Reading for pleasure is the single biggest indicator of a child’s future success — more than their family circumstances, their parents’ educational background or their income.
Cassie Chadderton, CEO World Book Day
At the Children’s Conference, Chadderton was joined by World Book Day authors Joseph Coelho, Sita Brahmachari and Katherine Rundell as she officially announced the World Book Titles for 2021. A new animated video featuring the 2021 World Book Day titles can be found at: worldbookday.com.
Chadderton said: “We’re so proud to present the 2021 £1 books. Children can use their token to choose books that will appeal to keen readers and provide routes to reading. There’s non-fiction and verse, there are great books for reading together, there are engaging and appealing illustrations, as well as fiction to set the imagination spinning. I hope children and young people will see these £1 books as windows into the lives of others, and as a reflection of their own interests and lives too.”
A dedicated World Book Day sub-campaign will work to engage teens in national debate about reading, exploring what teenagers and young adults – from those who love reading to those who don’t – feel about reading and books, and what their habits are.
In future months, World Book Day will be working with the Diverse Book Awards to feature their children’s prize winner and to connect with more children, and collaborate with the Free Books Campaign, which works to get books to those who cannot access them, for free.
In 2020, World Book Day shared 2.5 million stories during World Book Day month, as part of its widely successful Share a Million Stories campaign. 1.03 million £1 books were gifted in the UK & Ireland in only five weeks, with 30.5m £1 book tokens distributed overall.
Share a Story Live events reached 7,500 children in four National Literacy Trust hubs, while distribution of books to prisons enabled more families to share stories. Dennis the Menace & Gnasher championed sharing stories to 420,000 children in a World Book Day Beano Takeover, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson shared a story at 10 Downing Street with local London schoolchildren and Waterstones Children’s Laureate, Cressida Cowell.
The 2021 events programme will be delivered fully digitally — further increasing World Book Day’s reach and providing opportunities to talk to children and young people in imaginative new ways. Further details will be announced later this year.
Find more information, and join the conversation via:
worldbookday.com | @WorldBookDayUK | #WorldBookDay | #ShareAStory
For all media enquiries, please contact Sophie Goodfellow (sophieg@fmcm.co.uk) and Ashton Bainbridge (ashtonb@fmcm.co.uk).
