Pictures tell a story in Children’s Book Week

Booktrust is celebrating books which spark the imagination by combining superb illustrations with magical language with the theme for this year’s Children’s Book Week, taking place from 5 to 11 October, of Words and Pictures.

Thousands of events will take place across the country during the week, including author and illustrator talks and book swaps, all aimed at encouraging children to view reading as a source of pleasure, explore libraries and bookshops and even start writing themselves.

Scholastic Book Clubs and Fairs and Intuitive Media are holding an exciting new Virtual Literary Festival during Children’s Book Week, giving children across the UK access to ‘Hot Seat’ interviews with authors and illustrators including Jacqueline Wilson, Martin Brown, Holly Webb and Children’s Laureate Anthony Browne, via Intuitive Media’s safe and mediated social networking sites. For more details visit www.superclubsplus.com/clubs/vlf2009

Children’s Book Week, now in its 78th year also features National Bookstart Day on Friday 9 October, celebrating the Bookstart programme which gives three packs of free books to every child in the UK.

Schools, libraries and teacher training institutions in England should have received teachers’ packs during June, including Booktrust’s Best Books guides. Free downloads of all the pack contents are also available in the ‘Children’s Book Week’ section of the Booktrust website at www.childrensbookweek.org.uk

Speaking in support of Children’s Book Week, Children’s Laureate Anthony Browne said: “I’m really pleased that this year the theme for Children’s Book Week is words and pictures. We rightly hear much about children and literacy but this nearly always refers only to verbal literacy. I write and illustrate, so for me pictures and words are equally important – and they’re not just for the young.

“At a time when books are already under pressure from TV, computer games and DVDs, picture books are put under pressure from a tendency to assume that children should be leaving picture books behind at an earlier and earlier age. Too often we hear adults encouraging children to leave picture books behind and to move on to ‘proper books’ – books without pictures.”