Celebrating World Book Day

World Book Day is an annual celebration of the written word that takes place on April 23 (the UK celebrates in March, which makes it not quite a world day, but still). This day was chosen because it was the day Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare died.

April 12 is also Drop Everything and Read Day, and the week of May 6-12, 2024, will also be Children’s Book Week, so you can use these ideas for those celebrations, too.

It’s fun to celebrate books in the classroom and at home any time, but this day is an especially good excuse to read, write, illustrate and talk about books.

Here are some ideas of things you can do in the classroom or at home to celebrate World Book Day:

Dress up as characters from books. There are so many great costume ideas out there but here are a few roundups to get you started: Crafts on Sea | Clean Eating with Kids (get the Diary of a Wimpy Kid printables from them) | Finding Myself Young | Desert Chica
Print and color or otherwise make bookmarks. I have a collection of printable bookmarks to color, and another one here, or you can get out your art supplies and have kids design their own. And if you want to make a big activity of it, you can even get kids to stitch their own bookmarks.
Design a reading fort. If you have room in your classroom or house for a dedicated reading space, you can actually make it, or just have kids draw a design for their own ideal reading space.
Write a book. You can make books out of a piece of paper with these instructions from Instructables, or use journaling paper with space for a drawing (you can download lined pages with space to draw from Paper Trail Design).
Show and tell or book tasting. Depending on the age of the kids, have them bring a favorite book from home to talk about, or write about a favorite book to share with their classmates. More on how to do a book tasting here.
Read books! If kids bring books from home they can share those, or pick from your classroom books. If the weather is nice you can read outside, or try something else fun like turning off the lights and reading with flashlights.
Host a book swap. Kids can bring books from home they aren’t reading and swap for others they might be interested in. Books that don’t get picked can go in the classroom or school library or be donated to a Little Free Library.
Go to the library. Speaking of libraries, if your family hasn’t visited your local library in a while, take a trip there. Or do a tour of local Little Free Libraries if your town has a lot.

If you celebrate World Book Day or any of the other upcoming bookish holidays, I’d love to hear what you do!

[Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay]

Kids all seem to go through a phase of loving trivia, and if you’ve got kids who want to know about the tallest, biggest and weirdest things in nature, they’ll enjoy the book Once in a Blue Moon by Emily Hawkins.

The book explores wonders of astronomy, meteorology, big trees, weird animals, volcanoes and more to show off the rarest events and phenomena in the natural world.

Kids ages 7-10 will learn about the lake (Lake Hillier, on an island off Australia) that has water that’s bubblegum pink, the world’s deepst came (Veryovkina Cave in the country of Georgia) and the world’s biggest tree, a banyan in southeast India with a canopy that covers more than five acres!

Readers will learn what a blue moon is, how supernovas happen and about Haley’s comet and solar eclipses, among other space-related phenomena. Closer to home they’ll learn about stinky flowers, bleeding trees, glowing fungi and pizzly bears.

There’s content about times when it’s rained frogs (and when frogs have exploded en masse), when snow made giant snowballs all by itself and how clouds stack on themselves like pancakes. The book also explores ball lightning, sun dogs, St. Elmo’s fire and more.

I love books like this and I know kids do, too. There’s so much weird and wonderful about our world and even as adults we don’t know about all of these things. I found it fun to learn, for example, that there’s a volcano on the island of Java that not only sends out blue flames from vents near its crater, it’s also home to an acidic lake.

Illustrations by Vlad Stankovic illuminate these weird natural wonders and are sure to get kids interested in learning more about some of these remarkable animals, plants, rock formations and more.

About the book: 80 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Wide Eyed Editions. Suggested retail price $30.

Have you read?

Leave a Reply