May 10-16, 2010 is Children’s Book Week, and people across the country will be celebrating in schools, libraries, bookstores, and homes. The libraries encourage you to spend time reading with your child during this very special week.

Here are some ideas for celebrating Children’s Book Week at home.
· During dinner, each family member can share their current favorite book by naming the title, author and illustrator, and giving a brief description of the book and why it’s a favorite.
· Go to the library as a family and help each other pick out new books to bring home.
· After dinner, instead of watching television, read aloud from a book (or books) to each other.

Parents, librarians, teachers, booksellers and anyone interested in good books for children have been celebrating Children’s Book Week since 1919.

The need for promoting good children’s literature was a collaborative
effort between the Boy Scouts, publishers and a librarian from the New York Public Library.

The goal of publisher Frederic Melcher in 1919 was to create a "Book Week (that) brings us together to talk about books and reading and, out of our knowledge and love of books, to put the cause of children's reading squarely before the whole community and, community by community, across the whole nation. For a great nation is a reading nation."

A worthy goal and still true today.