International Children's Book Day is celebrated annually on April 2nd, the birthday of famous Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. Each year a different organization plans events to promote children's literature and reading. Andersen wrote over 150 fairy tales that have been translated worldwide, including classics like The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, and The Little Match Girl. His stories drew from his own experiences growing up poor in Denmark and continue to be beloved for their imagination, morality lessons, and ability to see the world through a child's eyes.

1. 2 April - International Children's Book Day
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2. International Children's Book Day
• Since 1967, on or around Hans Christian Andersen's birthday, 2
April, International Children's Book Day (ICBD) is celebrated to
inspire a love of reading and to call attention to children's books.
• Each year a different National Section of IBBY has the opportunity
to be the international sponsor of ICBD. It decides upon a theme
and invites a prominent author from the host country to write a
message to the children of the world and a well-known illustrator to
design a poster. These materials are used in different ways to
promote books and reading. Many IBBY Sections promote ICBD
through the media and organize activities in schools and public
libraries. Often ICBD is linked to celebrations around children's
books and other special events that may include encounters with
authors and illustrators, writing competitions or announcements of
book awards.

3. Hans Christian Andersen
• Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), Danish author and
poet, wrote many poems, plays, stories and travel
essays, but is best known for his fairy tales of which
there are over one hundred and fifty, published in
numerous collections during his life and many still in
print today.
• His first collection of Fairy Tales, Told for Children was
published in 1835. He broke new ground for Danish
literature with his style and use of idiom, irony and
humor, memorable characters and un-didactic moral
teaching inspired by the primitive folk tales he had
learned as a child. Though they do not all end happily his
Fairy Tales resound with an authenticity that only
unabashed sincerity can produce from a man who could
still see through a child’s eyes;
• “Thousands of lights were burning on the green
branches, and gaily-colored pictures, such as she had
seen in the shop-windows, looked down upon her. The
little maiden stretched out her hands towards them
when--the match went out. The lights of the Christmas
tree rose higher and higher, she saw them now as stars
in heaven; one fell down and formed a long trail of fire.”
—from “The Little Match Girl”

4. • Andersen’s fairy tales of fantasy with moral lessons are popular with
children and adults all over the world, and they also contain
autobiographical details of the man himself. Born on 2 April, 1805 in
Odense, on the Danish island of Funen, Denmark, he was the only son
of washerwoman Anna Maria Andersdatter (d.1833) and shoemaker
Hans Andersen (d.1816). They were very poor, but Hans took his son
to the local playhouse and nurtured his creative side by making him
his own toys. Young Hans grew to be tall and lanky, awkward and
effeminate, but he loved to sing and dance, and he had a vivid
imagination that would soon find its voice.
• After the death of his father, Andersen traveled to Copenhagen to
pursue an acting career at the Royal Theatre. Under the patronage of
the Theatre’s Jonas Collins, he attended the Copenhagen University
which were formative but difficult years for him. Coming from a
humble provincial background he had to adjust to bourgeois life in the
capital city and competitive realm of the theatre. Collins’ daughter
Louise and son Edvard were soon the objects of his affection.
Andersen turned his pen to writing poems, plays and stories, his first
poem “The Dying Child” published in the Copenhagen Post in 1827.

5. • The Improvisatore (1835) received international acclaim for Andersen,
published by the University, and with this encouragement he set off on his
literary career. Based in Italy, it is the story of young boy’s coming of age, not
unlike Andersen’s own introduction into society. Many of Andersen’s plays
including Love at St. Nicholas’ Tower and The Mulatto were performed at the
Royal Theatre. He had a keen interest in other cultures and traveled extensively
throughout Europe during his life and wrote a number of travel books
including; A Walking Tour from the Holmen Canal to the Eastern Point of the
Amager (1829); Shadow Pictures (1831), the result of his travels in Germany;
O.T.: Life in Denmark (1836), and Pictures of Sweden (1851).
• Now that Andersen had achieved success by his pen he was not without his
critics including philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, but fellow Dane Georg Brandis
wrote his praises in many essays. He had met many other illustrious figures in
his day including Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Honore de Balzac, Robert Browing
and his wife and fellow poet and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alexandre Dumas,
Victor Hugo, Heinrich Heine, Henrik Ibsen, Johannes Brahms, Richard Wagner,
Franz Liszt, and Bertel Thorvaldsen. He stayed with friend Charles Dickens in
London for a time, and was friends with the hereditary Grand Duke Carl
Alexander of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach. He received the Knighthood of the Red
Eagle from King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia in 1846, and the Maximilian
Order of Art and Science from King Maximilian II of Bavaria in 1859. He was
made an Honorary Citizen of Odense in 1867.

6. • “He now felt glad at having suffered sorrow and trouble, because it enabled him
to enjoy so much better all the pleasure and happiness around him; for the
great swans swam round the newcomer, and stroked his neck with their beaks,
as a welcome.” —from “The Ugly Duckling”
• After suffering from liver cancer and in the care of his friends the Melchiors,
Hans Christian Andersen died at their home on 4 August, 1875 in Copenhagen,
Denmark. He lies buried in the Assistens Cemetery in the same city. “First, you
undergo such a terrible amount of suffering, and then you become famous.” —
from The Fairy Tale of My Life (1855).
• Other Andersen titles include;
• Only a Fiddler (1837),
• A Poet’s Bazaar (1842),
• A Christmas Greeting to my English Friends (1847),
• The Two Baronesses (1848),
• To Be or Not To Be (1857), and
• Nikos
New Tales and Stories (1858-59).
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