What is World Book Day and what am I doing here?
World Book Day display, Borders bookstore on Charing Cross Road; Humphrey’s up in the left hand corner
World Book Day is celebrated in many countries (not the U.S.) but is especially big in the United Kingdom. There are numerous events for adults and children in celebration of books, special short reads published for adults … but the children here get the very best deal. Every school child in the UK gets a 1 pound token to buy one of nine short books especially commissioned for the event. Or they can get 1 pound off any other book.
This year there were nine authors chosen, including Dav Pilkey, Neil Gaiman and me! Thirteen million tokens are given out; the book printings are around 250,000. My book, ADVENTURE ACCORDING TO HUMPHREY, is about a third of the size of a normal Humphrey book.
Many schools mark the day with book events including costume parades where students dress up as their favorite characters. I met several children who were dressing up as Humphrey - my apologies to their mums for having to make such complicated costumes!
Because WORLD ACCORDING TO HUMPHREY was a Richard and Judy winner (Richard and Judy being the Oprah show and book club equivalent in the UK), and because I was asked to write a World Book Day Book (ADVENTURE) and because TROUBLE ACCORDING TO HUMPHREY and the audiobook for WORLD ACCORDING TO HUMPHREY both come out in April, Faber and Faber, my UK publisher, generously invited me to come over for a week of promotional activities.
(My husband Frank tagged along because we’re spending an extra week here on our own.)
October 27th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Hi, i’m a girl from hong kong and recently have surfed on the net and have found this lovely book. i like humphrey so much that make me interested in this book. i have tried to shop around the book stores in hong kong but didn’t find it at all…. i think it must be an interesting and popular story book.