For World Book Day I joined children at my local bookshop Read on Sea for a storytime session. The shop’s motto is ‘sit sip read’ and it’s my favourite kind of bookshop, full of fabulous books with delicious food and drink on the side.
I joined the children, who were wearing costumes of their favourite book characters, on the floor to read out loud to them from the ‘Stick Man’ book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler.
World Book Day aims to change children’s lives through a love of books and reading. It was created by UNESCO in 1995 as a worldwide celebration of books and reading and is now marked each year in more than 100 countries around the globe. Last year alone the organisation provided 50 million £1 book tokens to children in the UK.
I'm a lifelong champion of children’s literacy and it's quite sad to hear that according to World Book Day research, a staggering one in seven pupils stated that the book they purchased with their token was the first book they ever bought. For those receiving free school meals that figure climbs to one in five pupils.
I'm proud of the Conservative Government’s commitment to improving children’s literacy. The most recent OECD programme for international student assessment international literacy tables saw the UK climb from 25th in 2009 to 13th in the 2022 rankings.
Taking time every day to read to children at home is one of the most important and enriching things we can do as parents.
