Book-Week. I don’t know if it’s an international phenomenon but here in Australia, around the August time of year, schools and libraries celebrate children’s books. The CBCA (Children’s Book Council of Australia) select a shortlist of the best children’s books across a variety of categories and then award the winning books. Libraries put on displays, teachers focus on shortlisted titles, authors supplement their income with school visits etc but best of all (or worst of all – depending on your opinion) there is the opportunity for a Book Week Parade!

Pippi-Longstocking, Heidi, Huckleberry Finn, you can dress up as any character you want – provided it’s from a book. In my family the book week dress up day has always been a favourite, and for the last two years my daughter has gone to school most miserable because, sadly and for some unjustified reason, high schoolers are not permitted to dress up on book week day. For several years she lived in a Lucy dress I was crazy enough to stitch up for her. What better character would there be for a Narnia fan?

For my son the trend has been for comic book characters. We’ve done Asterix, Tintin, Calvin (along with his trusty friend Hobbs) and this year, proudly trailing his ‘Blankie’, he went as Linus from Charlie Brown.

Linus was a fairly easy costume to put together, as are any number of ‘regular’ characters from novels set in the current day. Some biographies also lend themselves to desperate attempts to call ordinary clothes ‘dress-ups’. I have a friend who has written and published a memoir of the time her family lived in Nepal during the civil war. Her sons have all very happily attended school during Book Week as themselves – for they truly are characters from a book!

What about at your place? Do your children love dressing up as book characters provided there is an opportunity? What is the most work you’ve gone to to create the desired costume? What was the simplest idea?

Penny Reeve is an Australian Children’s author who has finally ‘made it as an author: during this year’s book week someone actually ‘dressed up’ as a character from one of her books. (Thanks Andrea – you made this author’s Book Week dream come true!)