To be irritated by kids dressing up as Buzz Lightyear on World Book Day?

[theoracleofdelphi]

It's World Book Day. Children are invited to go to school as their favourite book character. Why oh why is Facebook full of photos of little darlings dressed as Buzz Lightyear & various Disney Princesses?!
For some reason it really makes my teeth itch!

You could just say they are feeling a little blue today.... but no doctor needed

My son loves reading, but I'd be surprised if having to dress up today makes any difference to that either way.

I am crap at craft and making things and don't feel the urge to spend hours sweating and cursing over a homemade outfit that will look like a dog's dinner no matter how much effort I put in.

There are some giant pairs of judgey-pants on this thread. Batman has been on the printed page since the 1930s, Spider-Man since the 1960s - they're practically classic literature for god's sake.

Just to reiterate - the clothes my son is wearing to school today have absolutely nothing to do with his relationship with books and reading.

YABU. My just-5-year-old DD wanted to go as the Little Mermaid. She has the book, we've read the book much more often than we've watched the film. She has been really excited to go to school in her Little Mermaid costume - asking each morning this week whether today was the day she could go as a mermaid. Should I have totally dampened her excitement by telling her that she couldn't go as the Little Mermaid as isn't a 'proper' book? What would be the point in that?

My son went to school this morning in a "Where's wally " costume because he wanted to, and because it was the one I was able to assemble in the 6 minutes notice he gave me last night , before I left for my 6th twelve hour night duty . And no, I can't schedule it into half term , because I spent 90 odd hours either being at work , or getting to or from it , so quite frankly the only thing scheduled was actually sleeping . Not that I feel the need remotely to justify myself to any sanctimonious patronising arse , who uses what is supposed to be a bit of fun , as just another stick to beat parents with ,because their costume wasn't hand made , and sourced from the imaginative coupling of organic egg boxes and hand thrown artisan weaved hemp sacks , referencing 16th century literature .

Fuck that shit .

Meh, it's not something I can get worked up about. I have 3 kids 6 and under and am heavily pregnant. If my DDs want to go as Anna and Elsa, I am perfectly happy to let them wear the dresses we have.
As it happens our school had a "share a book at bed time" theme and they were all invited to go in their PJ's. I did go out and buy them new PJs, but they needed some anyway! Easy peasy, sorted and job done. Sometimes I really love our school!

I'm pretty sure there's a discussion of this type on MN every world book day

snowgirl
The Little Mermaid is based on a fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson so it is a proper book

DD has chosen to be the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.

She's wearing red school cardigan over white top and black trousers. She's made a large fob watch out of a paper plate which she's drawn a clock face on and pinned to her cardigan with some gold ribbon left from Christmas and some duct tape and used some left over face paint to paint whiskers and nose. Only thing I had to buy was some bunny ears from the pound shop so came out lightly.

DD on the other hand is wearing a gruffalo costume from Sainsburys because that is what he wanted to be and mummy is too lazy to create terrible teeth, terrible jaws, terrible claws, poisonous warts and purple prickles all over his back and whatever else it was

What an awful parent you are showgirl. What you should have done is insisted she go as Jane Eyre after her spending the entire half term entertaining herself while you handmade a dress and bonnet to one-up the other parents.

plom

I bet he looked fab and would probably guess there were far fewer than in my dc day

YABsobloodyU!!

Who cares what other children wear?? My 10 year old has dressed up in his full Chelsea kit, as billy the kid. A story about a boy who played for Chelsea. It's real, he told me about it and I had to google it! I did order the book from amazon for him but it's not arrived yet.

My 7 year old is having world book day next week due to school closure, and he'll be in his Man Utd kit from their yearly annual, it's a book and he reads it! He also loves horrid Henry but refused to dress up as him.

Who cares? This year our school basically said to wear what you want, book character, PJs or your own clothes. It's just for fun, it doesn't matter. To be honest, parents can want all they like for their kids to dress as Scrooge or Willy Wonka but at the end of the day you've got to get the child to agree to wear it.....more hassle than making an outfit from scratch at times.

Erm, also, the judging each other thing goes both ways - making a costume doesn't make someone a knob either. Knobbery is only demonstrated by those who judge the quality of someone's parenting based on a fancy dress day. Seriously.

Chloe.
Of course we could have all spent the half term week ferociously stitching and sewing outfits together.
Of course taking the week off work and running a business to do so would be completely the right thing to do eh
And yes as you quite rightly pointed out world book day is the same time every year?
So is year end for tax purposes and sodding pancake day and it happens to be the same time as all the normal things the dc do,like weekly groups social events etc etc

I take it you must be one of the mum brigade that has many more free hours to make costumes whilst sitting on your ivory tower tutting at us awful mums for not making the effort

To those of you like me that are running homes keeping jobs as well as running ourselves ragged by the weekend I salute you all

Happy world book day everyone

Not only have we been told that costumes need to be proper BOOK characters (I'm fine with that, it is World Book Day after all) but we also have to 'provide an authentic packed lunch that reflects what the book character would eat'. AND the children have to design a book jacket, including blurb in their own words (not copied) for the book that their character comes from. (They are taking this a little far considering they aren't following the 'rules' themselves, and all of this is happening tomorrow not today!)

Oh for god sake- look I've got 5 month old twins, I've not slept in months, I spend all day breastfeeding and I've got about eleventy billion things to do when I actually get a free 5 minutes without a baby in my arms, like eating, showering, looking after my other kids etc. Of course they're meant to dress up as book characters but as I'm broke, exhausted and have no time, they need to make do with what we've already got. DD1 (7) wore her nightie and went as Sophie from the BFG. DD2 (4) was going as a Disney princess- I can make that into WW3 or I can just say, life is too short and too damn tiring to give a shit about this and let her go in whatever outfit makes her happy. And for the record our house is drowning in books, we've got more books than toys. Some people on this thread are ridiculous.

Gah bloody World book day

DS spent ages trying to decide what to go as, put his costume together by himself ( own clothes nothing to make). He walked out the front door to be "greeted" by his friend that he wasn't a good version of the character, prompting tears from DS. Friends mother then approached justifying her Sons behaviour ( he didn't say it nicely shall we say!) as in her mind it's not a book character. Depends if you count comic books and annuals as books?!!!

Suffice to say I shot her a bog off look and walked away.

Yabu. I would love to be creative and send my DS as the tin man or mad hatter. Unfortunately he wanted to be Spiderman. Given my DS has never read Alice in wonderland or Wizard of Oz, I prefer he is happy as spider man. Oh he has spider man books too, no it's not original but he's pleased.

I was always tempted to send ds in dressed as Patrick Bateman, but never had the nerve

I used to hate wbd and used to just send them in in jeans and a top. They both hated dressing up, I didn't have the imagination or the capabilities to make costumes and couldn't afford to buy one.

I don't see how it encourages children to read anyway. The ones who read will read and the ones who don't, won't. It's all about parental influence not stupid dressing up day.

provide an authentic packed lunch that reflects what the book character would eat

What if they've dressed as a triceratops? Or a vampire?

I'm not sure that's been properly thought through.

An authentic packed lunch..... !!!!

So in DS's case (gruffalo) mouse on toast and in DD's case (white rabbit) presumably a carrot and a couple of leaves of lettuce.

Can't see either of them being impressed

Such lazy parents! It's just terrible I am starting my DC outfits for next year today. The hand beading will take at least six months to complete!

Seriously why would you want to do normal parenting things like working to feed the Dc when you have something as important as world book day to prepare for! I bet some of you haven't even started your Christmas preparations yet!

for the avoidance of doubt this highly sarcastic, I'm just glad that comic books now count

The teacher who thought up the lunch idea always refers to herself as a 'creative thinker'. Hmmm, yes. She has children at the school too so isn't just inflicting this on the rest of us!

miladythesarus if they are dressed as a vampire it saves you making lunch just send a note saying

"Dear Headteacher as vampires only eat directly from source and you did want him to have something authentic, I'd be grateful if you'd offer your arm so he can feast on your blood today. Many thanks for your co-operation Miladythesaurus

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