International Children’s Book Day was established by the International Board of Books for Young People (IBBY) in 1966, on the birthday of the great Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersen (April 2, 1805).

Since then, each year a different national branch of this organization prepares a message and a poster, which are distributed around the world, with the aim of emphasizing the value of books and reading and encouraging international cooperation in the development and dissemination of literature for children and young people. This special day aims to ignite the flame of love for reading in the hearts of children and to arouse the interest of adults in the world of children’s books.

In all countries, children, writers, illustrators, translators, librarians, publishers and educators celebrate this world day with various events in schools, libraries, bookstores, squares and other places, thus showing love and their interest in books and reading.

More specifically, this year’s message for World Children’s Book Day is: «Cross the seas with the wings of imagination! Stories travel on the clouds, longing to hear the happy beat of your heart.”

The Department of the IBBY – Greek Children’s Book Circle made sure that the message was translated into Greek and urges organizations interested in children and their books to celebrate World Children’s Book Day. The message was translated into Greek by the writer Loti Petrovich-Androutsopoulou.