World Book Night in the works

The 2nd annual World Book Night charity event will be held April 23. With the goal of giving out one-million books, volunteers are needed and the deadline to sign up is February 1. That Bookstore In Blytheville owner Mary Gay Shipley, pictured with her book of choice, Kate DiCamillo's "Because of Winn-Dixie", and "Ender's Game" written by Orson Scott Card.

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World Book Night started last year in England on Shakespeare's birthday, April 23, as a charity to promote the importance of literacy and encourage light or non readers to pick up a book and start reading. To achieve this goal publishers, printers and authors teamed up with volunteers and organizers to provide books to potential readers at no cost to the reader or the giver.

With a goal of giving away one million books this year, the event has expanded and is moving into communities across the United States, including right here in Mississippi County. To sign up as a giver just visit the WBN website and click on the sign-up banner at the top of the page. Applicants will select three possible books from a list of 30 titles to give out and then answer a few short followup questions including where they plan to give out books, which is limited only by the giver's imagination, according to Shipley.

"I'm really excited about this and I can't wait to see how many people sign up and where they choose to hand out their books. I think that will be very interesting, to see some of the neat places people come up with to distribute their books," said Shipley.

With the books being given out at no cost the only thing being asked of volunteers is to give up a little of their time and make sure they give away all of the books they have to people who don't read very often, or at all. Anyone wishing to be involved can visit www.worldbooknight.org and sign up to be a volunteer. All volunteers must sign up by February 1 in order to have the application processed and responded to by the end of February.

"Anyone who wants to sign up should do it as soon as they can. The closer we get to the first, the busier the site will be which could cause it to crash. Although, wouldn't it be kind of neat to crash the site because there were so many volunteers signing up," Shipley said.

For more information visit the WBN website or call Mary Gay Shipley at 870-763-3333.

cpinkard@couriernews.net