Australia’s Children’s Book Week is celebrating its 80th year in style, with children donning their best costumes for the traditional parade in schools across the country.

The event has the theme “Book an Adventure”. It is run by the Children’s Book Council of Australia, which has been promoting literacy and reading for children since the end of the second world war.

Book Week began in 1945 when a group of women wanted to raise the profile of Australian children’s literature, according to Jo Panckridge of the Children’s Book Council.

“These ladies, way back in the 1940s, started working to encourage authors and illustrators to write books that would resonate with Australian children,” Panckridge said.

“We’d had so many English books up until then coming into Australia so they felt that children needed to know a little bit more about their country, their culture and the things that resonated with them.”

But Book Week has a special importance in the 21st century: in 2023 the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that 76% of children aged between five and eight read for pleasure but just 63% of those aged 12 to 14 did the same.

“Book Week is a celebration of the best Australian literature, it’s a celebration of reading, a celebration of the joy of being able to read in this country and to encourage and advocate reading for pleasure and reading books to children,” Panckridge said.

“Book an Adventure” was chosen as the theme this year because “with books, a reader can venture anywhere at anytime and can meet any number of people from the past to the future and the present without ever leaving their bedroom”, Panckridge said.