On Thursday 2nd of March, we will be celebrating the 26th anniversary of World Book Day. The purpose of World Book Day is to help improve lives through inspiring a love of books and shared reading. 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. We want to see all Chiddingstone children develop a life-long love of reading. To encourage this, World Book Day organisers and their publishing partners, will be presenting every child with a £1 token that they can take to their local bookseller and exchange it for one of twelve free titles or put towards the cost of a text of their choice. Even better, we can also accept these tokens at the Scholastic Book Fair (arriving Friday 3rd of March), which will hope you will all visit.

The day itself will be filled with lots of exciting, celebratory ways to promote reading for pleasure – not just on World Book Day, but all year round.

We will be inviting the children and staff to celebrate by coming to school dressed as a character from a favourite text. What fun! We are giving you a little bit of notice and letting you know before half term so that you have time to plan your costume. Prizes will be presented for the best in each year group. In exchange, we will be asking for small donations, which will go towards expanding and updating our class libraries.

Spending just ten minutes a day reading and sharing stories with children can make a crucial difference to their future success and it’s fun for all involved.