world book day is a pointless, costly pain in the arse for working parents?

[LumpenProletariat]

Does it make any difference to reading levels? As a solo working mum, I find it a total pain and costly too.

We used to have this travelling book shop that came to our school in the 80s/90s and you could bring in money to buy a book, and there were also competitions (I assume hugely rigged) to win books from it throughout the week. It was amazing!

Thank goodness our school chooses to celebrate St Davids Day instead - children can wear their own clothes including something red 👍

Children in need is another annoying one for dress up - 11 yo DS doesn't own any yellow spotty clothes and I refuse to buy them. One year I used a plain white tshirt and painted coloured dots on it (using whatever paint we had). Last year I bought some pudsey ribbon from eBay for £2 and tied it round his head bandana style.

It's a pain in the arse.

I always assumed WBD was created by Amazon to maximise sales of costumes (and secondarily) books! Oops.

In our school children can come in wearing an item of red clothing. As it is in one of the most deprived areas of the country this makes WBD accessible for all.
When my DS was in Primary he once dressed in normal clothes and said he was a generic boy from book!

NETSRIK it's easy to get out of wearing a Harry Potter related costume though. Just declare it's for religious reasons.
(The Entertainer toy shop doesn't stock Harry Potter toys as they are a Christian run company)

It definitely predates amazon. But it's also only done in the UK - very odd. I wonder why they called it "world"? :o

I think it was invented by netional book tokens?

I think it’s very far removed from its original intention and should be put to bed.

I totally agree and now, just when I thought I’d escaped it, they are doing it at the secondary school. Not pleased.

A recent local school poll, suggests that World Book Day costs, per child, an average of £25. Cost aside, It's generally considered to be a wholesale pain in the ass, which does little or nothing, to generate any interest in reading.

Oh I don't know, it's generated my interested in reading parents moaning

YABVU- celebrate books (which everyone has even if it's mr men from McDonald's)
you know it's coming
outfit can be a pencethere's plenty of posts I won't repeat
our school usually does pyjamas or no dress up
let's celebrate books in a digital world

I hate World Book Day. It usually just involves lots of children piling into school wearing clothes/outfits that’s aren’t related to books at all

It’s basically a non-uniform day and the label of “world book day” attached to it just puts lots of pressure and stress on parents.

It’s just so pointless.

I've got two children who hate dressing up, unless it's for Halloween, or as a princess/ fairy in 5yo DD's case. Her school's theme is pirates, monsters and aliens. She's neurodiverse and so fixates on her own interests and finds it very hard to try something else. She also has sensory issues, so we have to be really careful. She won't wear a mask, she refused the idea of trying to make an outfit. The only way we thought we could get around it was to buy a more 'girlie' alien costume. She saw that the sleeves were short and scratchy material and I just knew she'd struggle to wear it. So we tried to look for cheap dresses or jumpers that had aliens or monsters but weren't able to find anything below £20. In the end, we ordered her a dress with stars/ planets on. It's a bit of a stretch of the theme, but we had to do something to prevent her sticking out like a sore thumb by wearing uniform, or feeling uncomfortable. She still says she wants to wear her unicorn jumper over the top

I love the idea of celebrating books, and encouraging reading. I think schools should stop themes and go with free choice and offer more options on how to celebrate. My dd can't be the only one who struggles.

@Whatafustercluck

I've got two children who hate dressing up, unless it's for Halloween, or as a princess/ fairy in 5yo DD's case. Her school's theme is pirates, monsters and aliens. She's neurodiverse and so fixates on her own interests and finds it very hard to try something else. She also has sensory issues, so we have to be really careful. She won't wear a mask, she refused the idea of trying to make an outfit. The only way we thought we could get around it was to buy a more 'girlie' alien costume. She saw that the sleeves were short and scratchy material and I just knew she'd struggle to wear it. So we tried to look for cheap dresses or jumpers that had aliens or monsters but weren't able to find anything below £20. In the end, we ordered her a dress with stars/ planets on. It's a bit of a stretch of the theme, but we had to do something to prevent her sticking out like a sore thumb by wearing uniform, or feeling uncomfortable. She still says she wants to wear her unicorn jumper over the top

I love the idea of celebrating books, and encouraging reading. I think schools should stop themes and go with free choice and offer more options on how to celebrate. My dd can't be the only one who struggles.

Or just ditch the bloody dress up completely.

My Sons School (Elloughton Primary, East Riding of Yorkshire), seem to turn the focus to 'fund raising' rather than reading. In fact, everything they seem to promote has a cash grabbing agenda.

@Anubias44 Are they fundraising for books though? Cos that would make sense.

I'm not a big fan of sorting it out but my children LOVE it and were so excited to get dressed and go to school today. I spent £2.50 on some tights and everything we reused from home. It was lovely to see them all today and the whole school did a costume parade so they could see everyone else's too.

@Legoisthebest. It would be nice to believe that, however, a member of teaching staff, recently let something slip that suggests otherwise. There is allegedly a huge 'slush fund', that is a hell of a lot more than a 'prudent reserve'. It's balance would appear to go significantly down, as well as up.

Teacher here, and I believe it is a commercial bandwagon that has nothing to do with books. It's all about costumes. Hate it!

I agree with Covidwoes. My kids , now teens, love books and we have a whole house full of them but they dreaded these kind of costume days.such a pressure on those kids who just aren't into this Kind of thing...

it doesnt have to cost, i dont do it now as my son is in secondary and says he's too old for that crap.

but in primary I never understood why parents bought horrible tacky costumes from high street shops whats the point. I did dress my son up but only using stuff he already had, I was most proud of his where the wild things are costume, sewed a tail made of an old sock stuffed with cotton wool to a pair of gray joggy bottoms, gave him his matching gray hoodie and made him a crown out of shiny paper and stuck paper ears to the inside of it, job done.

the others were not that different, dressed in black with a T shirt ninja hood and his foam sword he had anyway as a ninja, sent him as robin hood once as he had a green hoodie at the time, all I did was cut holes in a pair of socks to be the arm guard things, everything else was stuff he already had including a toy box from poundland.

*toy bow

Aw I used to love helping them dress up as their favourite characters. Sadly now they're at secondary school they don't seem to do it any more.