Penguin Random House | Munich, 11/14/2023

Getting Ready For World Book Day 2024

On April 23, 2024, the publishing world will once again celebrate World Book Day. In Germany, the children’s book imprint Cbj and its partners traditionally give away one million books to school classes. The “Ich schenk dir eine Geschichte” campaign has been running since 1997, and Anke Girod and Timo Grubing have created the graphic novel “Mission Roboter” for next year.

When World Book Day is celebrated in many countries on April 23 next year, Germany’s Verlagsgruppe Penguin Random House will once again be an integral part. Through its children’s and YA imprint Cbj, Verlagsgruppe is one of the key supporters of Germany’s largest reading/literacy promotion campaign “Ich schenk dir eine Geschichte” (The Gift Of A Story). Schools in Germany can already register for the voucher campaign now to give their pupils the chance at a free copy of the new World Book Day graphic novel “Mission Roboter: Ein spannender Fall für die Glücksagentur” (Mission Robot: A Challenging Case For The Happiness Agency). Starting in April 2024, kids will then receive this year’s story by author Anke Girod and illustrator Timo Grubing as a gift from their local bookstore on presentation of the voucher.

The initiators are thus once again presenting a graphic novel to inspire schoolchildren to read with a varied mix of text and illustrations. The story: Mila and Baran can’t believe their eyes when one day a weird object lands on their roof terrace – or rather crashes into it. Right outside the HQ of their happiness agency, the Glücksagentur, which promises solutions to all kinds of problems. For Mila’s great hobby is helping others. And so, together with Baran, who always has the best ideas, she has set up an agency to do just that. But the strange arrival raises questions – especially when it introduces itself as robot child A3B3. It’s not long before Mila and Baran find themselves in the middle of their most exciting case yet.

"Ich schenk dir eine Geschichte” is a joint campaign by the Stiftung Lesen, Stiftung Buchkultur, and Leseförderung des Börsenvereins foundations, Cbj Verlag, Deutsche Post DHL, and ZDF. Every year since 1997, to coincide with UNESCO World Book Day on April 23, 4th-and 5th-grade schoolchildren have received a story written especially for the day and published by Cbj. The Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the German federal states are supporting the initiative for the 18th time with their patronage and are financing the printing of the book vouchers.

“For more than 25 years now, schoolchildren have been given the gift of a book by local bookshops every year on World Book Day,” says Jörg F. Maas, Managing Director of Stiftung Lesen. “This year’s Reading Aloud Monitor by Stiftung Lesen clearly showed that giving children books as presents encourages them to read. The recently published IQB study and other educational studies have made it painfully clear to us that this is of the utmost importance, as our children’s reading skills are worse than ever before. We are therefore all the more pleased that, thanks to our strong partnership with the other initiators, we reach over a million schoolchildren every year with this campaign. It is a strong signal for reading and literacy promotion.”