Send in Your Stories, Photos, Videos, and Minutes!

We hope you had an amazing World Read Aloud Day on Wednesday and just want to remind you to please visit our submission page to tell us how you participated and how many reading minutes you tallied! Let us know if you will be able to send in any photos or videos as well and we will be in touch with further instructions.

We can't wait to share more amazing WRAD stories with you here. In the meantime, we recommend checking our Facebook Wall for lots of photos and comments from participants around the world!



LitWorld's Times Square Read-Aloud Marathon is Underway!

Our team kicked off World Read Aloud Day in the middle of New York City with the start of our 24-hour Read-Aloud Marathon, and it's off to an amazing start. We hope you will join us to read and listen, any time today, midnight to midnight...

Tune into our appearance on Good Morning America at 8:30am EST to get a glimpse of the New York City action, and keep an eye out for more Times Square Marathon coverage to come after our press event at 10:15am EST.

Also, for you New Yorkers, don't miss our exclusive poem in the NY Daily News tomorrow, a joyful piece by LitWorld's Poet Laureate Kwame Alexander!

Let's keep this incredible day going strong and beautiful all around the world.

Thank you to Rabeaa Alnasser, our WRAD Ambassador in Jordan!

Rabeea Alnaser, our Ambassador in Jordan, is the founder of House of Tales & Music Project, which came out of her faith as a mother, teacher, and librarian. As a grandmother, she is now making reading stories a daily habit. After more than 40 years of work in in education and libraries, she has become an expert in Arabic children's books and other translated books. She is the first specialist in children's stories in her country of Jordan. She believes that stories and art are the most important learning keys, and it is her belief that artistic experssion, as well as the discovery of the world's stories and tales, is the approach to be adopted in children's education, upbringing, and the most effective method in creating a loving personality in the child.

Her House of Tales & Music project seeks to create a space of freedom filled with enjoyment, discovering, meditation, experimentation, and a method for discovering new meanings of life. Its a place for children that can express themselves through arts of painting, drama, and hand craft skills.

In partnership with the the German Goethe Institute in Jordan, she will be participating as a storyteller for the World Read Aloud Day program. She will be reading the story of a rabbit overcoming fear. The next activity will be at the House of Tales and Music, and they will celebrate by reading stories and painting with orphans on Friday morning. On Saturday,  there will be another celebration at Majdalawi library with a storyteller from Palestine.

While Rabeaa and the Goethe Institute will be celebrating World Read Aloud Day a few days after our designated day, March 9th, we are happy they are included in our special worldwide celebration! Thank you Rabeaa, Goethe Institue, and House of Tales & Music!

The Santi School in Kathmandu, Nepal, Joins Us for World Read Aloud Day!

We want to give an honorable and special mention to our Ambassador in Nepal, Vidhan Rana, who works with The Santi School Project!

Here is an entry that they posted about their WRAD activities on their website:

The Santi School Project will be celebrating the World Read Aloud Day on March 9th with more than 200 students in the remote hills in Sindhupalchowk District in Nepal. The event aims to celebrate the power of words, especially those words that are shared from one person to another, and creates a community of readers advocating for every child’s right to a safe education and access to books and technology.

The Santi School Project will be organizing the days events in eight schools that we work with in Ramche Village Development Committee in Sindhupalchowk. Last year LitWorld reached out to 40,000 participants across 35 countries for the first ever World Read Aloud Day.

Santi School Project is a 501-c(3) registered non profit organization registered in the United States working on promoting quality education for children in rural Nepal since 2006. We first started out with a goal to build a school in a remote village in Nepal where the children did not have the opportunity to go to school. In 2008, the school was built and we continue funding the school’s operation. Today, we are engaged in renovating and providing infrastructural support to other schools in need across the country and also help provide quality early childhood education training to primary school teachers.



A Special Event on March 9 Hosted By Our Westchester New Mom Friends!

Babybites Westchester, Stroller Strides and The Rivertown Play Group are thrilled to come together again to bring to you a SPECIAL EVENT on Wednesday, March 9th, to celebrate LitWorld's World Read Aloud Day 2011! 10:30-11:30am at The Westchester, 125 Westchester Avenue, White Plains - lower level near the Nordstrom Cafe entrance.

Join us and Applause Westchester for amazing songs from Seussical the Musical, raffles prizes & gift bags. The event is free, but please bring two new books per child for us to donate.

Visit The Rivertown Play Group on Facebook for more info!