World Book Day is coming on Thursday 5 March 2020!

World Book Day 2019

We love World Book Day at the National Literacy Trust! The annual celebration of authors, illustrators, books and reading is one of our favourite days of the year. World Book Day 2020 is coming on Thursday 5 March with this year’s theme to ‘share a million stories’.

We celebrate World Book Day each year across all of the different strands of our work – in our National Literacy Trust Hubs, through our schools programmes and with our corporate partners.

We also know how important it is to try and make every day a book day. Last year we released research that shows the need to celebrate books and reading is greater than ever. The research shows that only a quarter (26%) of children now read daily, compared with 43% in 2015.

2020 theme

This World Book Day the goal is to ‘share a million stories’ across the UK on Thursday 5 March. So sign up and record every time you share a story to be in with a chance of winning £1,000 worth of books every week throughout March.

Books & events

15 million £1 book tokens will be handed out this year! Children will be able to swap their token for one of the 15 exclusive, new and completely free World Book Day books. Alex Rider Undercover: Four Secret Files by Anthony Horowitz, Kid Normal and the Loudest Library by Chris Smith and Greg James and many more are available in the full list of titles.

The World Book Day Share a Story Live tour returns in 2020, including events in three of our Hubs. Manchester, Hastings and Middlesbrough will all be visited by a host of writers and illustrators to rally young readers around the excitement of sharing a story – live on stage.

World Book Day resources

Looking for even more ideas for primary and secondary schools this World Book Day? Then look no further than this list of resources and for 2020:

Primary

Cross-phase

Secondary