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If you believe that reading is important, can change lives and you want to support our work to engage as many people as possible in reading please support us by making a regular or one off donation through JustGiving.

Reading changes lives and improves opportunities, yet a third of households don't have a book in them, 16% of adults aren't fully literate and too many people believe that books and reading aren't for them.

World Book Night aims to change that by engaging 20,000 passionate volunteers to put great books directly into the hands of hundreds of thousands of people who don't engage with reading, saying 'this one's amazing you have to read it'.

World Book Night is all about giving. The gift of the authors and publishers - worth millions - of the books. The gift of thousands of voluntary hours from our givers, bookshops and libraries. All so we can give the gift of a book into the hands of someone who's life it can change.

Please give generously so we can continue our giving.

 

On World Book Night

Lev, the protagonist of THE ROAD HOME, (my novel chosen to join the list of World Book Night titles), has read very few books in his arduous life as a sawmill worker in eastern Europe. When he comes to England, he’s given a copy of Hamlet by his friend Lydia, whose pedagogical instincts dictate that she work to ‘improve’ his mind. Hamlet is of course way too difficult for a man who has difficulty distinguishing ‘to be or not to be’ from ‘B & B’, but he struggles on with it and eventually finds some affinity with the anguished prince of Denmark. The reading plays a part in opening up and transforming Lev’s life. And this we know from voices around the world: books can transform lives. So let’s hope World Book Night will act as a kind of benign Ponzi scheme for the mighty word.

Rose Tremain

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Books

The 2013 WBN Books

The 2012 WBN Books

The 2011 WBN Books

Where to get World Book Night books

The selection process

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