On Oct. 8, children in Demopolis and around the world worked to set a world record for the number of children being read a book in a single day.

The event was sponsored by Wal-Mart and Jumpstart, an organization that helps youngsters learn to read, helping to cultivate a child’s social, emotional and intellectual readiness.

The book that thousands of children read worldwide was “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle.

Kelley Tarpley and Morgan Grimes of the Demopolis Public Library brought the book to several day-care classes on Oct. 8, reading the book to hundreds of children locally.

The former record was 700,000, set by the event last year. The event broke that record, as more than 1 million children listened to people read the book, but the final tallies for this year’s event have not been tabulated.

“We wanted to participate in this for our community,” Tarpley said. “We went to five day-cares and read this book to them to try to help break the record. We went to their Web site and entered the number of children we read to, which was 276.”

For more information on programs at the Demopolis Public Library, call (334) 289-1595.