AIBU to offer suggestions for last minute, cheap and easy World Book Day costumes

[cariadlet]

After reading so many World Book Day threads full of frustration and angst about costumes, I thought I'd post some ideas for quick and easy costumes. I probably should have done this a couple of weeks ago, so apologies to those who bought costumes at the weekend, but would rather not have had to.
A few do adapt dressing up clothes rather than being purely home-made, but most younger children have some dressing up clothes at home.

• Rainbow Fairy Magic – own clothes in the appropriate colours, fairy wings
• Horrid Henry – own clothes, cheeky grin
• Harry Potter – school trousers and shirt, cape, wand, lightening scar
• Queen of Hearts (nursery rhyme or Alice in Wonderland – princess costume covered with paper hearts)
• Christopher Robin – shorts, t-shirt, blue wellies (Winnie the Pooh cuddly toys as an optional extra)
• Mr Bump – own clothes, lots of bandages
• The Cat in the Hat – black clothes, red and white striped hat made from cardboard, black tail made from old tights
• Biff, Chip or Kipper – own clothes, large shiny magic key
• Rapunzel – princess clothes, long plait made from wool attached to princess hat
• White Witch (from Narnia) – white clothes, crown, wand
• Alex Rider, Jack Stalwart – own clothes and a few fake gadgets
• Charlotte’s Web – own clothes with web drawn on an old t-shirt, fake spider
• Tom (Tom’s midnight garden) – pyjamas, dressing gown
• Any character from the Secret Garden – reuse Victorian costume
• Tracy Beaker – own clothes, curly hair
• The illustrated mum (Jacqueline Wilson) – hippyish clothes, temporary tattoos
• Charlie Bucket (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) – old clothes, preferably a bit small and with a few patches, carry a golden ticket
• Burglar Bill – black trousers, stripy top, flat cap, eye mask, big bag labelled “swag”
• Angelina Ballerina – ballet costume, fake tail, sew or glue ears onto a headband
• Violet Baudelaire (A Series of Unfortunate Events) – long black dress or black skirt and blouse, black boots, hair tied back with a ribbon
• Lola – pinafore dress and long-sleeved top, tights, clips in hair – could have plastic glass with pink paper inside and pink straw for pink milk
• Just William – school shorts and school shirt, cap, make catapult out of twigs
• Mr Hogget (The Sheep Pig) – outdoor clothes, cap, wellies
• Harry – own clothes and a bucket of toy dinosaurs
• Greg Heffley (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) – own clothes, carry a diary
• Secret Seven – own clothes, big “S.S.” badge

And of course Halloween costumes can easily be reused eg witches can be Winnie the Witch and skeletons can be Funnybones

Lovely ideas!

I saw an idea on the twinkl page.. Poundland have tiger masks for tiger who came to tea.. Could bring in the plastic yes set

Crikey!

Some nice ideas.... but I'd hate to see the difficult and expensive costume list.

YABU for not adding this 3 hours ago, before I started work on DD's costume.

Thanks for the suggestions.. I still hate world book day...My DS hates it too, it's a real trial to persuade him to wear an outfit. They try and be a bit cool and trendy at age 11 and don't want to wear costumes, but the school insist.

Toothless - How to Train your Dragon

Black top, black trousers/leggings. One black sock, one red one

If you are feeling swish you can add a black scarf/shawl draped across back and over elbows as wings. And purple or blue hair chalk streaks for when whatever happens to set off the blue bits on the dragon

(This is the film Toothless not the book one, but I got to past caring)

Mumzypopz, what books does your DS enjoy reading? There's probably a character that he could be without having to wear an actual outfit IYSWIM. If he had his own clothes and maybe 1 accessory and a copy of the book he might not feel too self-conscious.

On your last one, I might suggest a little caution sending children in with an SS badge on.

Our school have surpassed themselves this year.

We have to decorate a potato as a book character. Presumably to make sure that parents do enforced craft, not just nip off to ASDA. Bastards.

Sharpies on the potato would probably work. :D Pretty sure there's books with potatoes with just a face too on Amazon. X

Darn I thought I'd had a stroke of genius with Funnybones

Gangsta Granny - burglar mask, old lady clothes, wig.

Sophie from BFG. Nightie, glasses (Claire's). We have a large plastic jar which I am putting cellophane in to turn into a dream jar.

'Boy' from The Witches - ordinary clothes plus toy mouse.

or George from George's Marvellous Medicine....own clothes plus a pan or a bottle and spoon.

Matilda .. dress plus books.

Children from The Midnight Gang. PJs, bandages as appropriate (can't remember all the characters).

Billionaire Boy... school uniform and fake (monopoly) money. Plus some loo roll?

Boy in a dress. Just that really.

The Person Controller - ordinary clothes plus games console controller.

Totally outing but when my DS was 3, he really loved the story of Noah. This was achieved by wearing one of my tshirts as a long shirt, trousers underneath, a tasseled scarf round his waist, material for his head secured with a headband, and a giraffe toy. The other one was already on the ark

It's worth having a rummage through their clothes and see what the might suggest. We managed a good pirate look for DD because she had stripey, knee high socks. Once we'd added black leggings rolled to the knee, school shirt, one of my scarves tied around her waist and another around her head she looked great. No expenditure was required.

I mentioned this on another thread but it is so easy it's worth repeating!

One of dh's plain white t-shirts and a yellow cardboard crown - the Little Princess. DD had dark, chin-length hair at the time so it was perfect.