This year, British Columbia has aligned B.C. Book Day with Canada Book Day and UN World Book and Copyright Day, which takes place Monday.
The UN chose April 23 to celebrate the book because that’s the date on which Miguel Cervantes, William Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega — a triumvirate of fiction, poetry and nonfiction — all died in 1616.
Cervantes is known as the first modern novelist. Shakespeare’s works need no introduction to English-speaking westerners with high school English. De la Vega chronicled Inca history, culture and society in the years following Spain’s invasion of Peru.
Celebrations in Canada are — unsurprisingly — low key. One online site states: “As no special events are held on Canada Book Day, you can celebrate it by picking a new book to read or rereading one of your favourite books. It is also a good occasion to find a new book series to immerse yourself in or to learn more about Canadian authors.” Why not have a nap, too.
Few Canadians are even aware that an annual international, national and provincial day to celebrate books and reading exists.
Some book-related events are taking place, more as coincidences in scheduling. Both Munro’s Books and Bolen’s Books have author readings scheduled in April and May. Some of the authors with works shortlisted for this year’s B.C. Book Prizes are touring schools and public venues around the province in the lead-up to the awards gala on May 4. The Times Colonist has its annual book sale at the end of the month, and today is the final day to drop off books for the sale at the Victoria Curling Club.
If you’re on the Lower Mainland, the Vancouver Public Library is hosting a bona fide B.C. Book Day event with local authors. The Vancouver library also recently completed its 2018 Reading Lights installation. Celebrating the work of B.C. children’s book authors and illustrators, Reading Lights features excerpts from books and illustrations on lamp posts at 60 locations near parks, playgrounds, schools and libraries throughout Vancouver.
In Victoria, we hang flowers from our lamp posts. In Vancouver, they hang literature. Go figure.
It’s a far cry from the U.K., which has rescheduled World Book Day to March 1 every year to keep the celebration from occurring during an annual school break. It’s odd they didn’t also change the name of the event to reflect the parochial schedule. It’s as if they missed half of the point of World Book Day, which is to celebrate books and reading as a worldwide community.
However, having made the unilateral calendar adjustment, many schools and communities in the U.K. make a big deal about it — even the media there cover it.
But the British media tend not to focus on books when they cover (British) World Book Day. They typically cover the costumes that kids wear to celebrate characters from books. They provide examples of costumes and tips on how to create a kid-lit-themed costume, and run contests for the best book-character costume of the year. The results are many Waldos, Matildas, Charlie Buckets, Mary Poppinses and Harry Potters.
The focus on costumes seems a bit marginal to the day’s core intent, but, hey, if it gets kids excited about books and reading, why not?
Then there’s the headline that ran — in the news section, no less — in the Telegraph, March 1, when much of the U.K. experienced real winter weather.
“Parents fret as World Book Day costumes wasted as schools closed and events cancelled due to snow” suggests that (British) World Book Day might be missing the mark by an even wider margin than I had thought. It indicates that parents are more engaged in the event than is its pre-adolescent target audience. It suggests that the costume, performance-art, parental-bragging-rights focus might be pre-empting the reading requirement.
Although youngsters might have been as disappointed about not being able to show their costumes to classmates, I suspect — kids being kids — they took it in stride that they had to stay home to, well, you know, read a book or something.
Still, it’s better than the London Evening Standard’s suggestion: If you can’t bring yourself to read a book, go see a movie that’s based on a book. Ouch.
But, in the end, at least those wacky Brits do something as a national community to acknowledge books and Book Day.
For my part, I’m going to hang a basket of flowers. Then I’m going to sit down with a cup of tea and a good book. I might even have a nap, too.
