International Children’s Book Day – 2 April

International Children's Book Day is celebrated every year on 2 April, which is also Hans Christian Andersen's birthday. It is a special day where we celebrate children's books and encourage children to read. We have fantastic books from all over the world in our libraries, in lots of different forms.

International Children's Book Day 2019

The theme of ICBD 2019 is Books help us slow down. IBBY Lithuania is the sponsor for International Children's Book Day 2019.

Read the message and see the poster written and illustrated by Kęstutis Kasparavičius, message translated from Lithiuanian by Daina Valentinavičienė

I'm in a hurry! ... I don’t have time! ... Good-bye! ... We hear words like that almost every day, not only in Lithuania, which is in the very centre of Europe, but in many other places of the world. No less frequently do we hear that we live in the age of information overload, haste and rush.

But if you take a book into your hands, you immediately feel a change. It seems that books have this wonderful quality – they help us slow down. As soon as you open a book and delve into its tranquil depths, you no longer fear that things will whizz by at a maddening speed while you see nothing. All of a sudden, you come to believe you don’t have to dash off like a bat out of hell to do some urgent work of little importance. In books, things happen quietly and in a precisely arranged order. Maybe because their pages are numbered, maybe because the pages rustle gently and soothingly as you leaf through them. In books, events of the past calmly meet events that are yet to come ...

Celebrate International Children's Book Day

Here are some ways you can celebrate International Children's Book Day with your library:

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