World Book Day smashes Share a Million Stories target

World Book Day smashed its Share a Million Stories target within 24 hours of the event, with 1,066,691 stories shared by Friday 6th March.

Hundreds of thousands of children, parents, carers, authors, illustrators, schools, bookshops, libraries, and publishers across the UK and Ireland shared 10-minute stories with 1.5 million stories shared at the time of writing.

World Book Day c.e.o. Cassie Chadderton said: “It’s wonderful to see this overwhelming response to this year’s World Book Day campaign. It’s incredible to think that over a million stories were shared between children and adults in such a short space of time. One million stories, at 10 minutes each ‚Äì that’s a lot of shared reading across the UK and Ireland!

"Through World Book Day 2020 children and young people were given a chance to be part of the fun and excitement of story sharing. We all took a big step forward in making reading for pleasure the habit of a lifetime.”

The unprecedented super-share was launched at Clapham Library with Greg James and Chris Smith on 27th February and is scheduled to run until 29th March.

On World Book Day on Thursday 5th March, Share a Million Stories swept the nation as #WorldBookDay trended across the UK and Ireland across the day, with the Share a Story Live tour seeing a stellar line-up of authors and illustrators to 1,000 children in Middlesbrough, 2,000 in Glasgow, 1,000 in Bexhill-on-Sea and 1,000 for the flagship event at the HSBC UK National Cycling Centre in Manchester.

The Duchess of Cornwall shared a story in a London primary school with Anthony Horowitz, as a phenomenal line-up of World Book Day champions supported the campaign across social media channels, including Gary Barlow, Sophie Dahl, John Boyne, Minnie Driver, Marcus Rashford and Lucy Worsley.

World Book Day also went to 10 Downing Street (below) where Prime Minister Boris Johnson joined a group of children and Waterstones Children’s Laureate Cressida Cowell for an impromptu drawing session. On Wednesday, over 80 MPs stopped by the Parliamentary Drop-in at Portcullis House to show their support for the campaign.

Dermot O’Leary and Onjali Q Ra√∫f kicked off World Book Day on BBC One "Breakfast", as the "Today" programme featured both a World Book Day-themed puzzle and Thought for the Day.
ITV News ran interviews recorded with Greg James and Chris Smith at the Loudest Library event, while "The One Show" interviewed Malorie Blackman and Susan Calman about the book-themed new series "Great British Menu".

Robin Stevens and Onjali Q Ra√∫f were interviewed on "CBBC Book Club", while "CBBC Newsround" ran a news piece and interviewed children using the National Literacy Trust statistics released on World Book Day. In Manchester, BBC Radio Manchester attended the Share a Story Live event, interviewing authors, children and teachers, with Manchester Evening News also on-site, filming Facebook Live interviews with the authors, and speaking to children and teachers.

The day rounded off with O’Leary reading Charlie Cook’s Favourite Book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler for a special World Book Day-themed "CBeebies Bedtime Story", and then A-list actor Stanley Tucci read the Official World Book Day Bedtime Story, Roald Dahl’s The Witches from 7 p.m. on the Roald Dahl Facebook page.