Our mission is to promote reading for pleasure, offering every child and young person the opportunity to have a book of their own. 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.
World Book Day defines Reading for Pleasure as:
Feeling sense of satisfaction or pleasure by engaging with chosen reading material in their free time.
We want to see more children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, with a life-long habit of reading for pleasure and the improved life chances this brings them.
The evidence base shows there are 6 building elements which support a child to read for pleasure
- Being read to regularly
- Having books at home and at school
- Having a choice in what to read
- Finding time to read
- Having trusted help to find a book
- Making reading FUN!
These 6 elements shape and guide everything World Book Day does.
Thank you to our partners
World Book Day has developed this framework in partnership with the National Literacy Trust, Centre for Literacy in Primary Education and The Open University. We have drawn on their extensive research
evidence and they have quality assured this framework. We hope this framework will result in longer term and deeper engagement in the reading for pleasure pedagogies and practices provided by our partners.
We have been able to complete this work with support from The Charity of Sir Richard Whittington, a charity associated with the Mercers’ Company.
