World Book Day is a worldwide celebration of books and reading, marked in over 100 countries all over the world. This year marks the 17th World Book Day and nurseries, toddler groups, children’s centres and schools across the city are getting involved, with a variety of activities such as guest story tellers and book-themed dressing-up.

Youngsters travelling on First York’s number six route (Tang Hall to Clifton) will be able to get involved by reading books which will be available on the buses on World Book Day. The books have been kindly loaned by City of York Council’s Explore Library Learning Centres.

And, visitors to City of York Council’s West Offices will be able to drop in to the main foyer where a ‘comfy’ reading area will be available for families and children and members of the council’s Early Years team will be on hand to read stories.

Visit the World Book Day website (http://www.worldbookday.com/) to find out more about encouraging children to read.

As part of the national celebrations, thousands of nurseries and schools will receive book tokens to distribute to the children and young people, which they can exchange for a range of books in their participating local book store.

The council is already working with children in some of York’s most deprived communities to encourage reading. The authority was only one of four in the country to receive support from the Fatherhood Institute who themselves received  funding to support over 600 children in areas of low educational achievement by encouraging their fathers to take a more active role in their development through regular reading.

The initiative – Fathers Reading Every Day (FRED) – aims to encourage Dads to read to their child every day, instilling good reading habits in families.

Under the initiative Dads spend 15 minutes a day for two weeks reading with their children, then 30 minutes a day for the next two weeks. Each father documents the amount of time spent reading to their children and the number of books read, with a special event at their local children’s centre at the end of the four weeks to celebrate their achievements.

The support from the Fatherhood Institute will also be used to recruit and encourage males to work within Early Years, with a ‘Men into childcare’ conference on 3 May at West Offices.