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World Book Day

7th Mar 2024
Author: Elspeth Lewis

What is World Book Day?

On the first Thursday in March each year many children leave their school uniforms at home and instead dress as their favourite literary character. Dressed in stripes as Wally, carrying an umbrella as Mary Poppins, or even eating Marmalade sandwiches as Paddington Bear. The reason for this is World Book Day. However, there is much more to this day than dressing up.

Started in April 1995 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), World Book Day is a celebration of books, reading and copyright. It is celebrated in over 100 countries. The official date of World Book Day is 23 April to coincide with the anniversary of the deaths of notable writers William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. However, in the United Kingdom and Ireland, World Book Day is celebrated on the first Thursday in March to avoid clashes with Easter holidays and St George’s day celebrations.

In the UK and Ireland, World Book Day events are organised by the World Book Day charity. This charity aims to promote reading for pleasure amongst children and families. Reading for pleasure has been shown to have many benefits including improved vocabulary, better performance in school, improved empathy skills and improved mental wellbeing.

World Book Day Tokens

The World Book Day charity provides £1 book tokens (or €1.50 for people in Ireland) for all primary school children and participating secondary and nursery schools. This allows children to get a discount on full priced books or use their book token to get one of a small selection of £1 books specifically published for World Book Day.

Here at the National Space Centre, we are excited to learn that one of the £1 books this year is a book called “Can You Get Jellyfish in Space” written by Dr. Sheila Kanani. The book explores the history of animals in space. It tells the stories of some of the space flown animals you might know about as well as those of some more unexpected animals. It also goes through training required to go into space, as well as detailing some of the galaxies that are named after different creatures.

For more information on the World Book Day charity and the full list of the books on offer this year please visit, https://www.worldbookday.com/

Author visits

Over the last year we have welcomed several different authors to the National Space Centre to talk about their books. The authors have visited us for a variety of different reasons, some as part of our careers days, some as part of our UK in Space Festival, some for dedicated events about them and their books, we even have one author who visits us almost every day as her day job is here at the National Space Centre!

Let’s look back at what we have got up to with some of these authors.

National Space Centre

Lewis Dartnell

Professor Lewis Dartnell joined us in July as a guest speaker at the UK in Space Festival. The UK in Space Festival is annual event hosted by the National Space Centre for space enthusiasts to learn about the vibrant UK space industry, with a whole host of special guests involved in the industry. Professor Lewis Dartnell is a research scientist, presenter, and author. He joined us to talk about astrobiology, taking us on a tour of the other planets and moons in our solar system which may harbour life, and even further afield to alien worlds orbiting distant stars, to explore one of the greatest questions ever asked: are we alone...? Following his talk he undertook a book signing, including selling and signing his latest book “Being Human: How Our Biology Shaped World History”.
National Space Centre

Tom Kerss

In October, Tom Kerss joined us for our KS2 careers day. The day was all about careers in the aeronautics industry. He gave a talk about his new book “Children’s Picture Atlas of the Stars”. 150 children from 5 different local primary schools sat under the stars in the Sir Patrick Moore planetarium. Tom pointed out the different constellations and showed us some of the beautiful artwork from his book. His talk ended with a vocabulary quiz because constellation names are not always easy to pronounce, looking at you Boötes.
Tom Kerss is an astronomer and worked at the Royal Observatory of Greenwich for 6 years. He now provides talks and consultancy on space topics. He has also written numerous books about space for both adult and child audiences.
Liz Avery

Liz Avery

Tom Kerss isn’t the only author from the Royal Observatory of Greenwich who has visited us. Liz Avery is the Deputy Head of Science Engagement at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, a teddy bear enthusiast, and an author. She has joined us for events several times including at our Teddy Bear Small Space Day. Our Small Space events are dedicated days for under-fives. During Small Space days we always have story time led by one of our presenters. But in September 2022 Liz participated with readings of her book “Ted’s Great Space Adventure”, before then doing book signings. Ted is a teddy bear who loves adventures, and this book follows him on his adventure through the Solar System.

Charlie Isham

Kate Pankhurst

Famous for her series of books about fantastically great women, Kate visited us in October. She visited to talk about her new book “We are all Astronauts”. The book follows Luna Scope and her Granny on an adventure into how to become an astronaut. Kate shared stories about some of the female space pioneers including Wally Funk and Mary Jackson. As well as writing her books, Kate also illustrates them and as part of her talk she shared some of her sketches for the book with us. As a bonus treat for the audience, she drew one of the characters for her book live on stage.
National Space Centre

Maddie Moate

In November BAFTA winning TV presenter and Youtuber Maddie Moate joined us to tell us all about her new book “A Very Curious Christmas”. Her talk was filled with anecdotes and demos, like how crackers are made, why astronauts can’t eat sprouts in space and why in Catalonia there is a pooping man in the nativity. The story of the pooping man or ‘La Caganer’ so gripped my family, that when I went to Spain two weeks after Maddie’s talk, I returned with 3 in my luggage as gifts. Maddie even had the audience join in with playing a game of Sprout Kerplunk. Once the frivolity of a Christmas talk in November was over Maddie stayed to sign books and talk to all of her fans in the audience.
National Space Centre

Sophie Allan

At our Space Lates event in February, our very own Sophie Allan joined us to talk about stories in the stars and her book “The Solar System”. Sophie is the head of Teaching and Learning at the National Space Academy which is based at the National Space Centre. This book is a great introduction for young readers who want to learn about our local star, the Sun, and the planets in orbit around it. In August 2024, Sophie’s next book, “Amazing Space” coauthored with another member of the National Space Centre staff, Josh Barker” will be hitting the shelves so keep your eyes peeled for it.