A childcare worker herself, the Prime Minister's wife Margie Abbott understands the importance of reading to children.
Her guest appearance at Sydney's St Ives library was among 2,300 readings of a book called "Too Many Elephants in this House", which was selected for this year's National Simultaneous Storytime.
"Story time is a large part of my life, whether it was with my own children or the children I'm now caring for," Mrs. Abbott said. "It's very important for children, particularly under the age of five, to love books and learn there's a message with every story."
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The initiative sees the book read to children across various communities at the same time encouraging them to build up a passion for knowledge and stories.
The Australian Library and Information Association President Damian Lodge said more than 400,000 children took part this year, highlighting the important role public reading in libraries still plays in the lives of children from an early age.
"If we don't get literacy right when our children are young, we know this can lead to many issues down the track," he said. "Your literacy skills go with you throughout your entire life so we're very happy that so many people have jumped on board this year."
The initiative has been going since 2000, but for the first time it's teamed up with SBS who've recorded audio versions of the book in 13 languages other than English.
Storytellers were also on hand around the country to read the book in Greek, Punjab, Vietnamese, Hindi and Mandarin among others.
Journalist Lucy Chen was among them.
"My daughter when she was 8 years old didn't know any language," she said. "But through all those simple little story books she started to get the idea of different language and she progressed so rapidly."
If you'd like to share storytime with your children in English or another language, visit www.sbs.com.au/simultaneousstorytime
