The International Children Book Day (ICBD) is being observed today in the commemoration of birthday of famous children writer Hans Christian Andersen and this chain was started in 1925.
Hans Christian Andersen was born in Denmark in 1805 and died in 1875. He was an author and poet who was best known for his fairy tales, loved by children all around the world.
Among his best-known stories are The Snow Queen, The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina, and The Ugly Duckling. His fairy tales have been translated into over 150 languages, whose millions of copies are still sold every year, which has become a part of the reading culture of most of the countries.
Gul Afshan, Manager for Rawalpindi Section, Ferozsons, while talking to the APP said that organisation had been publishing books for children for several years.
It is pertinent to add that the sale of such books is increasing day by day. She further told that supplementary reading books for children were mostly published in Urdu as it is still the language of majority of the population, however the books in English also have major contribution in developing reading habits in children.
It is bit disappointing that parents are not heeding on this issue much, and their focus is only on childrens homework, adding that the West has much better ratio of publishing of storybooks for children, he added.
On the contrary note, the marketing manager of Liberty Books Imran told the publishing ratio of story books for children was much higher in English than Urdu, as we are not receiving healthy response for Urdu story books.
He further elaborated that Liberty Books was publishing such books for 15 years and most of their authors are from the West.