Book Week Costumes

Book Week Costumes Hanging up and READY TO GO

Image created on https://www.canva.com/

If you’re a teacher librarian in a school, particularly a primary school, Book Week is will no doubt be one of your busiest weeks of the year. As a teacher librarian and parent, I’ve learnt the hard way (it wasn’t pretty) to organise costumes ahead of time. I now get the costumes out the weekend before Book Week, have a trial, and then say calmly, “and on Wednesday morning, there will be NO alterations darlings…do you understand?”.  This year, I present you…PudStar as Pippa from ‘Pippa’s Island’ and ChickPea as Annabelle from ‘Piccolo and Annabelle’.  ‘Pippa’s Island’ has really captivated Pud (9), so when I asked her what idea she had for Book Week dress ups this year there was absolutely no hesitation in deciding on Pippa. You can see the full review of the ‘Pippa’s Island’ books and an interview with author Belinda Murrell here. In keeping with the island vibe we went with shorts, runners and flowers (and a pineapple twizzle stick!) in the hair. In first the book, Pippa’s mum is starting up a cafe so is trialling baking and smoothies, so we did a cupcake hairbun and a pineapple swizzle stick thing. In the second book she’s a junior reporter – hence the camera. I spent a grand total of ten minutes on Canva typing out my fav quote from the book (a nice empowering one – which she needs ATM), and then emailed the image (below) to the shirt person, paid my $18 and the shirt arrived two days later. Winning people.

So that people know who my girls are dressed as, I always print out a little cover of the book and usually we wear them as necklaces (me included), but Pippa’s bun was crying out for something to go with the tropical flowers and fruit so I’ve shoved some kebab sticks with book covers into her hair.

And now to Annabelle! We recently had Stephen Axelsen come and visit for the day and we had the loveliest day watching him sketch and paint, eating excellent French cheese (and really awful over-smoked olives – sorry about those Stephen!), chatting about life (and death) and getting a sneak peek at the originals of his latest picture book. We had read the ‘Piccolo and Annabelle’ series before, but after his visit, ChickPea insisted we read the first book again and she has pretty much been in character as Annabelle ever since.

Annabelle is a Guardian Angel, but she is monumentally chaotic, has truly messy hair and has to wear a shawl to hide her angel wings. She also carries around ‘Mystifying Spray’ to spray mere mortals if they witness her flying or being magical. ChickPea has laughed until she cried spraying people with her ‘Mystifying Spray’ (water and a drop of lavender and orange oil) and absolutely loves Annabelle’s bumbling ways. So again…it was an easy choice of costume and in fact all I had to purchase was two really messy hair bun curl cover things – I really have no idea how to describe the hair things but they were $2.00 each at the cheap shop! She is beside herself with joy.

I’m going as ME from ‘Lucy’s Book’, and I’ve even managed to talk dearest Rachel (our very long term homestay student from Macau) into dressing up, which is no mean feat. She is going as Kumiko from ‘Kumiko and the Dragon’, one of the books in our Readers’ Cup competition this week. She really didn’t want to dress up, but as her friends pointed out – she lives with the school librarian…and she gets to wear her cute pyjamas and even cuter little hair buns to school so really it was a no brainer.

Just remember girls…no changing your mind on Wednesday morning okay? 

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