Children’s Book Week

Children’s Book Week kicks off on November 12, 2007! Children’s Book Week introduces young people to new authors and ideas in schools, libraries, homes, and bookstores. Through Children’s Book Week, the Children’s Book Council encourages children to explore reading.

Artist: Jessie Willcox Smith Children’s Book Week Historical List of Themes and Poster Art

Children’s Book Week was not immediately embraced. It took a period of seven years before the idea became a reality.

In 1912, at the American Booksellers Association (ABA) Convention, E.W. Mumford, of the Penn Publishing Company, delivered a paper entitled “Juvenile Readers as an Asset” which express concern about both the quality and lack of promotion of children’s books. The paper was summarized in The New York Times, where it was noticed by James West, then Director of the Boy Scouts of America. West asked the BSA librarian, Franklin K. Mathiews, to become more involved in the children’s literacy movement. Mathiews spent the next couple of years touring the country to promote children’s books.

It was Mathiews who first proposed creating a Children’s Book Week. Frederic G. Melcher, editor of Publishers’ Weekly, and Anne Carroll Moore, the Superintendent of Children’s Works at the New York Public Library, agreed that it was a good idea and helped launch what was called Good Book Week in 1916. But Good Book Week wasn’t the nationwide event that Mathiews envisioned, so he pitched the idea again in 1919 at the American Booksellers Association convention. This time, a resolution was passed creating a Children’s Book Week in November.

The first Children’s Book Week slogan was “More Books in the Home” and nationally known illustrator Jessie Willcox Smith was tapped to do publicity for the event (see illustration on the right). It was a success and Children’s Book Week has been celebrated annually since.

Traditionally, Children’s Book Week has been celebrated during the week preceding Thanksgiving – and will be so for 2007. In 2008, for the first time in almost 90 years, Children’s Book Week will be held during one of the first two weeks of May.

For more information about how you can be involved, visit the Children’s Book Council web site.

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