to wish World Book Day should fuck the fuck off!

[Toraleistripe]

Grrrrrrrr. I'm hate it. I am all for celebrating reading and books but this yearly dress up activity at school drives me mad!

I have 2 Dc, they both want me to buy ready made costumes which will cost £30 or more! So not happening. I will still have to cobble something together though. I can't be arsed. We don't have anything. I have scoured the Internet for ideas. Kids either don't like the ideas or I don't have the stuff.

Sod off WBD!

IT gives me headache every year!
DD, loves her books, however, she doesn't have a favourite character and she's a real tomboy so absolutely no girl character costumes whatsoever for her. DS, not as much as a bookworm, but was happy in any one of his costumes last year although I've a sneaky feeling he's not going to want to wear any of them this year as he may feel their a bit 'young' for him now! DD went as cat in the hat last year, so I may persuade her to do same this year!

Mr Stink is a genius idea. That's DS2 sorted.

I came across a plastic Viking helmet at work so DS3 can go as Hiccup.

DS1 would be impressed with Tatiana. That has inspired me, we have a Stuart costume he got one birthday when he was Charles II obsessed, gel the hair back and draw on a beard.

Spare a thought for us poor bastards that have to provide a Victorian costume this Friday and then get clobbered with WBD!! I love the fact that the school added at the bottom of each letter "just use what you have at home" :)

I have a 4 year old ds and 7 year old dd and no frickin clue what to do. We have elsa/batman costumes but we always do that.

Unfortunately our "already at home" clothes are equally limited. Ds refuses to wear my thing unless it has the avengers on and dd has lots of tshirts with various motifs on and leggings. Dad has all star wars tshirts and I wear equally colourful tshirts, harry potter tshirts.

Any books where the kids wear karate outfits, we have those?????

We're told that the theme this year is to dress up as an adjective. Fuck sake what do I dress him as.

DRESS UP AS AN ADJECTIVE?!

For the love of actual Christ.

Well colours are adjectives just go as blue or something!

I work in a school and I hate this with a passion. Both my boys have gone dressed in football kit for as long as I can remember with Football Annual in hand.

Now for the tricky one ... what on earth do I wear??

I would love WBD if they gave us more warning.

My friends have been talking about it for weeks, what they are planning for their DC's at other schools.

Ours has left it so long I really thought they were not bothering this year. Still no letter home tonight.

IdaJones I will be doing the same as you once I know what, if anything, they are expecting of us this year. I daren't buy a costume in case they throw a theme at us, and for the same reasons I don't have time to start making something DS might not want to wear if it doesn't suit a theme.

Angell74 do you have anything left from Halloween? Or can you make a witches hat and a cloak? Because then all you would need is a cardboard sign with "I aten't dead" written on it hanging around your neck and you are Granny Weatherwax.

I thought DS would escape this year as in year 7, but no. His class have chosen "Gothic horror" as a theme. On Monday night DS was bemoaning the fact his vampire costume no longer fitted (age 6?) . He is going as Dr Frankenstein in an Amazon lab coat.

DD2 asked for the littlest mermaid tonight as her bedtime story, so she is going in wearing her Ariel costume with that.

DD1 wanted to do thing 1 and thing 2. But hard on her own. Need to check if she has a show that night, as will affect ability to colour hair etc. My plan is to go through the dressing up box and find what matches books for her to pick from.

DS has a cowboy costume she can borrow. But for what book?

We had dress as a word day (but no nouns allowed - which was probably to stop all the boys coming in in football kit). DS wore his dinosaur outfit (word was extinct) and DD was the word geeky with full on geek outfit.

My daughter wants to go as Athene, complete with war helmet and owl. I thought I could probably make a Corinthian helmet but it's looking more and more unlikely.

I was much happier when she wanted to go as Pippi Longstocking.

DS's school is planning a workshop where all the kids work together to create a picture storybook which will be entered in a national competition. Last year they had an author come in and read to them.

They're also having one of those Usborne bookstalls, which I see more as a voluntary, no-pressure opportunity to donate £5-£10 to the school, and is fine by me.

The newsletter ends with the words, bold and underlined Please note that children will not be required to dress up on the day on reading which I literally punched the air with joy!

Arts - your ideas are great. They won't wash with my D C s though

yeah mine are fussy and demanding little beasts

I know its mean spirited but HATE it too

and they now scorn my "paint and cardboard" creations

We haven't got a WBD issue because DD is happily going as a Gangster Granny, but I realised something today - how easy it is if you are a white child on WBD, rather than a black child.

Not so much for the very young ones who get to dress up as animals/cartoons etc. But for the older children that want to be a proper character from a book.

The only ones I could come up with were Crash from Tracy Beaker and bloody Othello . How can that be? There are a couple of black children in the Tracy Beaker TV series, but I don't know if they appear in the books.

There are only 3 black children in DDs school (and 2 Asian kids - we aren't very diverse). One is in year 5, the others are KS1. How do their parents do it I wonder. Possibly just overthinking, it only came to me today when DDs friends were all talking about what they were wearing in the playground this morning.

All you teachers saying you have just sent letters out about this, why why why could you not have thought about it and sent letters home before half term. Lots of parents have far more time in half term to sort stuff like this out (and even if they don't have more time over half term, at least they have an extra couple of weekends to get in to town to get anything they need), but sending letters out a week before is shit planning on your part. I normally stick up for the teaching profession, but do feel there is a complete disregard for parents when things like this are given out the week before when the school has known about it for weeks before hand (2 out of my 3 children need wbd costumes next week and 1 needed a costume for a show rehearsal for today, I found out about both things on Tuesday).. You lose a bit of my support every time communication is crap.

get lost WBD

Totally agree about lack of notice.
We had the letter in the book bag last night. So a week to organise an outfit which I refuse to spend any money on.
DD now has to "make your own story box" Whatever that means!
There's nothing like getting stressed over cardboard and glue to increase your love of books
Bah humbug!

I love my dds' school. Their WBD theme is 'bedtime story' - everyone goes in in pyjamas and takes a pillow and a teddy and their favourite book and they make a nest/den with all the pillows and read the books :)

Got a hell of a lot more to do with books and reading than forcing parents to provide yet another dressing up costume.

School I work in want staff to dress up. I hate fancy dress with a passsion. Might go as Cruella de Ville and take the dog in.

Hate WBD. My two want to go as characters from an American teen soap which apparently started as a book and as a character from the film book The Hunger Games.
Last year it also came very close to Anglo Saxon day and castle day so I nearly cracked under the costume pressure.

I'm thinking boy in a dress if my ds goes for it

"We're told that the theme this year is to dress up as an adjective. Fuck sake what do I dress him as."

Send him in wearing school uniform, and explain that he is actually representing two adjectives: nonconformist, and paradoxical.

Our school has today announced WBD dress up, with a fucking THEME. I thought BOOKS was the damn theme!!

My kids are a bit old for fancy dress and the school has picked a very babyish theme, we have nothing around the house that could be used, because it is so niche. I have got one day off work between now and WBD, and there is not enough time to order any cheap unethical crap from hong kong even if I wanted to. Fuck knows what I/they will do.

how easy it is if you are a white child on WBD, rather than a black child

As the mother of a mixed race child, it never occurred to me that the child would expect to dress up as someone from the same race. Mind you, neither of us is talented in costume design so she never looks particularly like the character she's meant to be.

Children had to go in dressed as something starting with the letter "c" today. We sprayed her hair pink and she went as candyfloss.

I'll hold up my hand to liking this kind of thing. Set your standards low and the whole thing can be pretty amusing. It helps that I have a child who is tolerant of my crap efforts and also quite keen to do it herself.