World Book Day Celebrations

WGS held two World Book Day Celebrations with a past and current Children's Laureate. Dame Jacqueline Wilson joined us on World Book Day itself, and Joseph Coelho and his illustrator Fiona Lumbers visited the following week to run a workshop focused on Junior school ages. 12 schools took part bringing over 500 local pupils, aged 4 to 14 to join 271 current Wolverhampton Grammar School students.

Aims

The aim of the partnership was to promote the aims of World Book Day and encourage reading for pleasure, offering every child and young person the opportunity to have a book of their own. Our events showcased two new releases - The girl who wasn't there' by Jacqueline Wilson and 'Luna Loves Gardening' by Joseph Coelho. Many of the students took the opportunity to purchase a book as well as receiving their World Book Day token.

Background

Wolverhampton Grammar School has been running author events for the last nine years and each year World Book Day has been an extra special event involving multiple schools.

Resources

We have previously run large scale World Book Day events at external venues with the benefit of some external grant funding. This year we financed both events ourselves and held it on the school premises.

Impact

Feedback from local schools to our Head Librarian Zoe Rowley shows that our events are having an impact on their children and growing a love of reading. We offer teaching materials as follow up to our events and training for other schools' through the librarians' network.