World Book Day 2023 at HGS
World Book Day is an annual event that happens around March. Some people dress up as favourite book characters to celebrate and all students are given a voucher to buy books (which is something I am looking forward to). World Book day is really a spectacular thing but what did HGS to do celebrate it? Here’s a taster so let’s find out!
History
World Book Day is a charity event held annually in the United Kingdom and Ireland on the first Thursday in March. On World Book Day, every child in full-time education in the UK and the Republic of Ireland is provided with a voucher to be spent on books; the event was first celebrated in the United Kingdom in 1998.
The event is the local manifestation of the original, global World Book Day organized by UNESCO to promote reading, publishing, and copyright, and widely observed on 23 April. Organizers in the UK moved the observance to avoid clashes with Easter school holidays and with Saint George’s Day. Book publishers in Ireland decided to bring World Book Day to Ireland a number of years later.
Conversely, the World Book Night event organized by independent charity The Reading Agency is held on 23 April.
What did we do?
On this special day at HGS, we attended a live virtual event brought to us by Anne Frank Trust, and it was hosted by an author… the great Tom Palmer! Tom Palmer is a popular author at HGS who writes about many subjects, including, football and history too. Much of his writing centres around the impact of World War II. He explores the complexity of war, the politics around war and the suffering children, soldiers and Jewish people experienced at the time. He writes about such issues with aplomb! But before Tom Palmer came on we were greeted by a worker for the Anne Frank Trust, Bethany, who was in London.
The event was truly a global one with people attending from Switzerland, Sweden and even Ohio.
We had a poll about why we celebrate World Book Day and the top answer was to share the joy of reading our favourite books – something we do well at HGS!
Then they started talking about Anne Frank and the legacy her diary left behind.
As some of you know Anne Frank had a diary which has been published all over the world. Bethany read the following extract:
Dear Kitty,
“Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen year old girl.”
After this, Tom Palmer went on and read us an extract of his new book: Resist. It turns out it’s about a girl whose only passion is to dance but she can’t, nobody can as the Nazi’s have seized their country and they could be sent to camps if seen out, but she decided to risk it all by dancing at a secret event to raise money and help the resistance against the Germans. The girl is none other than Audrey Hepburn!
In all honesty, this was a really interesting event for us here at HGS. The impact books can have on people, the narratives they communicate to future generations and emotional rollercoasters they can provide will probably be something we won’t forget.
Thanks for reading this!
Gabby (7W)
