Founder of the event, Jenny Milchman

This Saturday, December 1st, is the third annual Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day. If you don’t have your own child you could try borrowing one, though I hear there are rules about that sort of thing.

The event is the brainchild of thriller writer and mother Jenny Milchman, who three years ago took to her blog to say the following:

We need to show our children the pleasure, not just of a story, or even of a book, but of a bookSTORE. A place of half-hidden treasures just waiting to be discovered. Where you pluck things off shelves that are richer than jewels. Scheherazade’s lair.

Publishers Weekly reported that the idea soon went viral, and within a month eighty bookstores had committed to participate in 2010’s event. Now, hundreds of bookstores in the US, Canada, England and Australia take part — find your nearest one on this map.

Here in NYC The Strand, McNally Jackson and Babbo’s Books have all signed up. If you’re a NY-based parent and you’re not at one of those bookstores on Saturday, we can only conclude that you hate books, or booksellers, or your own child. What the fuck is wrong with you?