World Book Day is a charity event held annually in the United Kingdom and Ireland on the first Thursday in March. On World Book Day, every child in full-time education in the UK is given a voucher to be spent on books; the event was first celebrated in the United Kingdom in 1998. The event is the local manifestation of the original, global World Book Day organized by UNESCO to promote reading, publishing, and copyright, and widely observed on 23 April. Organizers in the UK moved the observance to avoid clashes with Easter school holidays and with Saint George's Day. Conversely, the World Book Night event organized by independent charity The Reading Agency is held on 23 April. History The United Kingdom's own version of World Book Day began in 1998, launched by Prime Minister Tony Blair at the Globe Theatre in London. Several million schoolchildren in the UK were given a special £1 World Book Day Book Token which could be redeemed against any book in any UK bookshop. A specially created WBD anthology priced at £1 was also published. All World Book Day point of sale and the £1 book carried the special World Book Day...