World Book Day 2008 - Lucy from Peanuts....

Today was World Book Day.
A wonderful day when booksellers get to exchange special books created just for the day for pieces of paper given out as £1 world book day tokens at schools up and down the land.

It's also a day, at Molly's school and many others where children get to dress up as their favourite book character.
Or, if Molly school is anything to go by, they get to dress up in whatever costume they have available / whatever they're into right now / something that's easy to put together at the last minute.

Because I'm pretty sure these are not valid World BOOK Day costumes: Hannah Montana, Jack Sparrow and Luke Skywalker.
This morning at school I lost count of the number of Harry Potters and Hermione Graingers I saw. There's also a large number of generic costumes which I don't think count either: Mummies, Pirates, Princesses etc.

As we've detailed before, Molly decided that this year she wanted to go as a Peanuts character. Charlie Brown was out. Snoopy was too difficult to do. So we settled on Lucy Van Pelt.

The original.

Molly.

We thought it was pretty good. Certainly the biggest prop her teacher had ever seen. She was given express instructions that it was not to be used as a horse, not to be waved around, not to hit people with it and be careful with the end of it when she turns round. Miraculously she did not take anyone's eye out.
Personally I think she got a bit fed up with explaining who the hell she was all day to everyone, but we think she had a fine time today.

After school it was off to the local bookshop; Simply Books of Pocklington. It's a lovely, independent bookshop and we'll always try and put money their way whenever we can. In fact I felt guilty about going in there and just spending our £1 voucher on the Captain Underpants book Molly wanted. I'm well aware that booksellers are making a loss on every £1 book they take a voucher for and I imagine it hits the independents far more than it hits the big boys. So we also sprang for Neil Gaiman's Odd and the Frost Giants (with the added bonus of some lovely Mark Buckingham artwork) and a full price book Molly liked the look of.

And while we're on the subject of Neil Gaiman and free books - Neil's Journal has a series of posts debating the merits of Neil putting some of his work online for free (it's American Gods - complete, for free, although in a format that physically hurts to read it - here). I'm all for this sort of thing as I firmly believe that anything that gets people reading will result, long term, in more people reading and inevitably, more people buying. All the evidence I need for this is my own life. I was introduced to the library in Dudley at a very early age by Dad and have used libraries ever since to investigate new authors and old favourites. But I still spend money on books. In fact, I probably spend more on books now than I use the library, but being introduced to so many different authors fostered a great love of reading and that's something any bookseller worth their salt can make money from.

All in all, a great day after a series of bloody horrible ones.

World Book Day 2008 - ties right into the ol' Black Dog

I'm still down. Nothing is any better. Now I have a huge stress related headache.

But life somehow goes on and we're getting Molly's World Book Day costume ready.
She's going as Lucy from Peanuts. We're in the middle of making her psychiatrist's booth and I look at the book we're using as reference.
And it occurred to me ........... That's just how I feel right now.......

World Book Day 2008 - what Molly is doing...

It's World Book Day soon. On the one hand this is a cause for great celebration and much fun all round. Molly's school has a lovely day of celebration and reading, the book vouchers are distributed and all have a lovely day.
But there's a twist. Oh, there always is.
Every year we get the word a few weeks in advance that it's world book day and then the note on the bottom of the letter mentions those two words every sane parent dreads:
Fancy bloody dress (that's three words).

Last year we chickened out and she wore a princess / fairy outfit and went as Molly the Goldfish Fairy from one of those Daisy Meadows books. You know the ones - the fairy series that never seems to run out of new types of fairies: flower fairies, jewel fairies, dance fairies, weather fairies, funday fairies, christmas fairies, pantomime fairies, pet keeper fairies, peace protesting fairies, anti-war demo fairies, arms dealer fairies, emergency service fairies. The list just keeps on growing and growing and Daisy Meadows accountant rubs his hands together with girlish glee.

But this year Molly's decided she wants to get a bit more creative and is after ideas. We've already rejected the Simpsons - not a book. She's rejected Harry Potter, as she did that a while back for the Harry Potter book release. But she wants to go as something interesting and since she's been reading comics at bedtime recently she wanted to go as Owly. But that was too difficult to do properly. Then it was Snoopy. Again, too difficult.
But it did give us an idea:

We have the dress, Molly's going to get her hair done for the day with a bob and a flick. All I have to do is make a portable psychiatrist's stand and maybe pick up an American football and she's going to be spending the day explaining to everyone exactly who Lucy Van Pelt is.

Bought a broom handle for a portable psych booth, get one laptop accesories box from work, lots of no more nails and gaffa tape. Leave to dry overnight:


More as the design develops......

World Book Day 2007 - Guess what Molly was.....

After a few days of pure comics posts, here's what else has been happening....

Today at Molly's school it was World Book Day. After years of her going to a school where fancy dress and special dress up days were not really observed that much and we knew that if she went in her school uniform, she'd not be alone, it seems we're destined to have to get a wardrobe full of fancy dress costumes.

Every single child at Molly's school was in fancy dress today.

So luckily the thoughts we had last night that Molly could just go in school uniform because we just didn't have anything suitable for her to wear stayed as thoughts. We'd borrowed fairy wings and skirt from one of the more organised TAs at school (it seems she has a whole room of her house just for dressing up clothes from what she was saying to me about it - Molly was the third child she'd kitted out!). But then Molly decided she wanted to go as Hermione from Harry Potter. But we didn't have anything to go with that look so she just dropped the whole thing.

Until last night. When she decided that she absolutely, positively, had to go dressed up.

Big falling out. Because the dress is too scratchy, the wings too difficult to put on etc etc.

Luckily this morning was a fresh start and Molly and I got cracking on the outfit. The scratchy skirt is solved by leggings underneath and t-shirt going inside the skirt. We worked out how to wear the wings properly as well.

But the masterstroke was the goldfish and goldfish bowl. Pure Bue Peter moment as daddy disappears into the garage and comes back with a stanley knife and the apple juice bottle. 1 minute later and a bit of string and wee have our goldfish bowl. Molly cracked on with the goldfish and by half eight this morning we were ready to face the world.........

This was Molly's costume:

(Fairy wings from one of the TAs at school, skirt from same, goldfish bowl from apple juice bottle hastily constructed by daddy, goldfish model's own.)

Any ideas what she was meant to be?

Give up yet?

It was this:

(of course)