³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

World Book Day is happening this week.

While many children will be looking forward to dressing up as their favourite character from a book, there's a lot more to it than fancy dress.

Here's what you need to know about the day.

In the UK, World Book Day is celebrated on the first Thursday in March.

It is celebrated by 100 countries all over the world. Unesco - a worldwide organisation that encourages people to enjoy art and culture - choose it as a special day to celebrate reading.

Unesco organised the first ever World Book Day on 23 April 1995. Two years later, people in the UK and Ireland got their first official World Book Day.

In the UK, we celebrate World Book Day on the first Thursday in March. This is because the official date for it - 23 April - usually falls during the Easter Holidays for most UK schools.

By celebrating in March, you get to have a special day at school to find new books, talk about reading, and dress up as your favourite characters from the books you read.

World Book Day was created to celebrate books and reading. In the UK, the focus is on encouraging children and young people to read for pleasure.

The aim is for children to be able to get together and share a love of reading.

This year, the World Book Day charity is asking people to "Read Your Way". This basically means find any way that you can to read.

Some suggestions are taking books home from school to read, listen to books being read aloud - by family or through an audiobook, choosing books that interest you, and making time to read.

The charity also recommends you ask other people you know for books they might recommend. Why don't you help other Newsround readers out and tell us what you've been reading in the comments?

There are special live events and online events throughout the day including draw-alongs and quizzes.

Schools celebrate World Book Day in different ways, some might have a storyteller visit, others might hold craft sessions so pupils can create their favourite characters from a book.

One of the most popular ways to celebrate is dressing up as a favourite character from a book.

On World Book Day, you can get a £1 token from National Book Tokens Ltd.

These can be spent towards a regular priced book, or on one of the World Book Day £1 books.

There's 15 different £1 books to choose from, at different reading levels.

And if you haven't used your book token yet don't worry, they can be used until 26 March so there is plenty of time.

A survey from the National Literacy Trust found that half a million children do not own a single book.

Access to books is something that Sir Lenny Henry, whose book The Boy with Wings: Attack of the rampaging robots is on the £1 book list in 2023, spoke to press packer and young author Doreen-Zilpah about this.

"I didn't have any books in my house [growing up]. When my aunty took me to the library and said 'go in there and find books', I was introduced to a world I hadn't seen before."

Studies have found that reading for pleasure helps children later in life.

"Books are important because you learn, even when you don't know you're learning, you're learning because you're reading a book," Lenny Henry told Newsround.

The actor, comedian and author also told Doreen-Zilpah why he loved reading.

"What's great about reading is you can design the sets, you can design the costumes, you can say this is what the characters looks like... it's all about the imagination connecting with what's written in the book".

What do you love about reading? Tell us in the comments below.