The Joy of Reading:

An Inclusion Coordinator’s Guide to an Inclusive World Book Day

In this edition of the LINC Blog, LINC National Coordinator Claire Butterly explores The Joy of Reading: An Inclusion Coordinator’s Guide to an Inclusive World Book Day.

World Book Day can bring excitement and celebration, but it can also create pressure and shift the focus away from what truly matters, children’s relationships with books. This reflective piece invites Inclusion Coordinators and educators to re-centre reading as a joyful, relational experience. Through an equity lens, the blog explores access to books, the role of INCOs in shaping inclusive reading cultures, and how slowing down can deepen meaning. It also includes a practical Inclusive World Book Day Audit tool to support team reflection.

World Book Day often arrives with excitement, costumes, and character parades. While dressing up can be joyful for some children, it can also create pressure for families, exclude those who cannot participate, and shift the focus away from what truly matters: the relationship between children and books. This day offers inclusion coordinators and educators a powerful opportunity to pause, reflect, and re-centre reading as a joyful, relational experience rather than a performance.

Reclaiming the Purpose of World Book Day

At its heart, World Book Day is about access, belonging and the lifelong love of reading. When we move away from costume expectations, we make space for every child to engage in ways that feel meaningful and safe. Books are not props, they are invitations to wonder, connect, imagine, explore and converse over. They can bring children (and adults) on adventures. An inclusive approach recognises that reading looks different for every child: listening, looking, retelling, moving, questioning, revisiting, acting out and sometimes simply being alongside a story.

An Equity Lens

An inclusive World Book Day must also recognise that not all children grow up surrounded by books. Research from Children’s Books Ireland highlights that many children, particularly those under 12 have limited access to books at home; with 19.5% of infants at 9 months having never been read to and at 3 years 20% of children being read to three or fewer times a week. For some children, ELC and SAC settings are the primary place where they encounter books, experience shared reading and develop relationships with stories. This shifts both the responsibility and opportunity towards all adults working with children: Inclusion Coordinators, early years educators, school aged childcare practitioners and teachers.

When World Book Day focuses on costumes, there is a possibility that inequality can be unintentionally reinforced. When it focuses on books, stories and shared reading experiences, it can actively reduce it. Inclusion Coordinators are placed in a unique position where they can reflect with colleagues on:

• Who has access to books beyond the settings
• Are there children who rely on the setting for book experiences
• Whether books areas are inviting, accessible and culturally meaningful
• How frequently children can revisit familiar or loved stories
• How books travel between home and the setting.

Access is not simply about quantity. It is the quality and meaningful interactions with books alongside responsive and attuned adults. Inclusion Coordinators hold a unique role in shaping how inclusive engagement with books takes place across the setting, not only on World Book Day, but every day.

Bringing back the joy of reading

Joy in reading grows through relationships. It lives in the shared moments of educators pausing on a page and asking children what they notice, children introducing their own stories or posing questions and adults and children returning to much loved familiar stories again and again.

Using a child-led, slow relational approach with children allows books to come to life. Instead of planning many activities around books, Inclusion Coordinators might

• Stay with one story for longer
• Follow children’s lead and questions rather than adult outcomes
• Encourage silence, repetition and unfinished endings
• Notice emotional responses, as much as comprehension

When reading slows down, meaning deepens.

Books as Tools for a Slow Relational Pedagogy

A slower relational approach supports children and educators be reducing pressure and creating spaces for meaningful interaction. Within a slow relational pedagogy, books become a place for connection, rather than teaching tools. Books support

• Connections between educators and children
• Peer conversation and shared meaning making
• Opportunities to explore identity and representation
• Emotional literacy
• Playful thinking

Inclusion Coordinator can observe how children use books as well as how adults use them with children. A book carried around or moved to a different space in the environment or retold through play or discussed days later tells us something important about its significance. This moves reading from an event to an ongoing relationship and becomes part of the living, evolving interactional environment.

Using World Book Day in Playful Inclusive Ways

Without costumes, the day can become richer and more accessible. Possibilities might include

• Story play provocations: provocations inspired by a book or books placed in continuous provision rather than adult led
• Favourite book spaces: children bringing a book from home or choosing one that matters to them in the setting
• Slow story sessions: small group reading with time for extended and wandering conversations
• Story in movement: acting, drawing, building or sensory exploration linked to a favourite book
• Adult story telling: INCOs and educators sharing books that they loved in their childhood
• Book noticing: asking children about books which appear or are noticed in their play.
• Library visits: reaching out to local libraries to see if children can visit the library, or if the library can visit the setting.

The emphasis shifts from doing something about a book to an evolving curriculum alongside books.

An inclusive approach acknowledges that:

• Not all children want to dress up
• Not all families can participate in costume expectations
• Some children experience anxieties when there is changes in routines
• Representation in books matters more than representation through costumes
• Reading is relational not transactional.

World Book Day offers more than a moment of celebration, it offers a chance to pause. A pause to reflect on what reading looks like within your setting. A pause to notice which children feel confident around books, and which children confidence around books is still emerging. A pause to reflect on what reading looks like within your setting. When the day and its focus shifts away from costumes and towards connections, World Book Day becomes an opportunity to strengthen a culture of reading that is inclusive, accessible and meaningful for children, families and educators.

For Inclusion Coordinators, this day can act as a gentle point of leadership. It invites conversations with the team about access, representation, pace and purpose. It invites educators to see books not as resources to read but as an opportunity within children’s play, identity exploration and emotional worlds.

When reading slows down, when children lead and when books are encountered in a relational way, World Book Day moves from an event to inclusive practice, becoming part of an ongoing commitment to equity, connection and getting lost in the magic of stories. And in these slower moments, the joy of reading has space to return.

Reflective Tool: An Inclusive World Book Day Audit

This reflective tool can be used individually, in team discussions or as part of Inclusion Coordinator leadership in conversations.

Planning for World Book Day:

Calm, regulated adults are the most meaningful support that we can offer children, especially on days where there is excitement, change and unpredictability such as World Book Day. World Book Day does not need to feel busy to feel meaningful. Slowing down expectations, sharing responsibility and planning can help the day feel more manageable and enjoyable for both educators and children.

Children can be prepared for World Book Day by being included in the planning and sharing the information with families, ensuring that there is a low-pressure approach. The following reflective prompts can support teams to pause before and after World Book Day.

In the days before World Book Day, you can talk with children and families about favourite stories, current interest and any supports that might help children to feel regulated during changes in routine. Within the setting, Inclusion Coordinators and educators can:

• Use visuals such as first and then boards
• Practice calming strategies already embedded in the routine
• Share a simple social story if helpful

In preparing for World Book Day, you can use the following points to reflect on.

Considering the children in your setting:

• Who participates easily in book experiences?
• Who watches from a distance?
• Which children may experience pressure during World Book Day expectations (costumes, routine change, noise)?
• How can books provide predictability, comfort and regulation?

Reflection Notes:

Considering World Book Day

• What is the purpose of World Book Day in our setting?
• Does the day widen access or create pressure?
• How can we centre books rather than performance?
• What might we do less of?
• What might we do more slowly?

Reflection Notes:

Role of the Inclusion Coordinator

• How do I support staff to see books as relational tools?
• What conversations about equity and access are needed?
• How are book choices made across the setting?
• How do we evaluate the impact of our reading culture over time?

Reflection Notes:

Key learning and next steps

• What worked particularly well on World Book Day?
• Which children seemed to connect with books in a new way?
• What would we keep the same next year?
• What would we change or simplify?
• Are there inclusive practices from the day we could embed into everyday practice?

Next steps/actions:

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