According to the Children's Book Council, a week dedicated to children's books was established in 1919 by several venerable partners including the American Booksellers' Association, the Boy Scouts, Publishers Weekly, the New York Public Library, and the American Library Association. Frederic Melcher, who at different times in his career served as PW editor and the secretary of the ABA, articulated a vision for Book Week that still holds true 89 years later:
(It) brings us together to talk about books and reading and, out of our knowledge and love of books, to put the cause of children's reading squarely before the whole community and, community by community, across the whole nation. For a great nation is a reading nation.