I have discovered the key to enjoying World Book Day (WBD) as a parent: do as little as possible.
I realised this the other night, watching my nine-year-old curled up on the floor next to me, making a ‘murder board’ prop for her costume as Pip, protagonist of Holly Jackson’s A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.
She was working with diligence and enthusiasm, making notes and printing pictures of ‘suspects’. Given her WBD ensemble involves wearing everyday clothes, this exercise was also entirely unprompted by necessity (or me pushing).
It was simply something she wanted to invest time and effort into.
Watching her, it hit me: my daughter understood the essence of what World Book Day should be about.
It wasn’t the costumes, or the stressed-out parents frantically WhatsApping each other the night before. It was that feeling you get when you’ve devoured a book and love the characters so much you want to throw yourself into their world and imagine their problems and triumphs as your own.
As the mum of four kids aged between seven to 14, I’ve parented through the key cultural milestone of seeing World Book Day (which falls on the first Thursday in March) transform from a barely acknowledged date in our diaries to the cause of significant nationwide parental distress.
All I can say to parents in the thick of it is: this too shall pass. Once your kids are old enough to do their own thing – seven to 12ish, I’d wager – World Book Day gets a lot better.
I’ve been every kind of stressed-out parent ahead of World Book Day.
The mum who wasted an afternoon trying (and failing) to refashion a bin bag into kiddie couture (inspired by Claris: The Chicest Mouse in Paris). The parent running around charity shops the night before in search of something (anything!) vaguely bookish for my kids to wear.
I’ve even been Anna Maxwell Martin’s Julia in Motherland, tearing accessories off my body on the school run in an effort to create makeshift last-minute costumes.
But these days, I don’t have to do anything.
With two kids in secondary school who don’t need to dress up and two at an age where they’ll only wear what they really want to wear, I’ve hit the World Book Day sweet spot. It’s glorious.
There are a couple of ground rules we’ve followed which have improved WBD (and other fancy dress occasions) in recent years.
We don’t buy anything new, including new-for-us items from charity shops. I also don’t ‘create’ anything – I don’t have the time, talent or the inclination.
So any World Book Day character my kids choose has to be assembled from the hodge-podge of stuff we already own, which makes things a lot simpler.
I was slightly horrified that a new survey from Rakuten found parents will spend £19 per child on World Book Day outfits this year – £2 more than in 2024… I can only hope those same parents are splurging on books for their kids in the same way.
The buy-nothing approach is easier than you might think, and guarantees the kids are comfortable and able to move around in their costume choices.
Last year, my six-year-old went as Pink Crayon from The Day the Crayons Quit. She chose pink shoes, leggings and a jumper and topped off her look with a plastic beaker one of her older sisters coloured pink with a felt tip.
The year before, her older sister (then seven), went to school dressed as Rainbow Grey, a character with magical weather powers, rainbow-streaked hair and a pet cloud cat.
We found some coloured hair pieces from a past dress-up occasion and clipped them into my child’s hair. She wore a vintage dress I’d had in childhood, and she carried a broken cloud lamp and a tinfoil-covered golf club as a staff.
Sometimes, I’ll even get into the spirit of things and wear something vaguely kiddie book-inspired, like the time I wore head-to-toe blue to channel Blue Crayon in The Day the Crayons Quit.
This shop-your-wardrobe World Book Day mentality is fun for my kids, and also encourages creativity (theirs, not mine!) and resourcefulness. It takes pressure off the parents and helps kids prioritise and discover what they like, and why they’re choosing something.
It teaches them they can’t get stuff whenever they desire, and sometimes, it leads to the kind of problem-solving a lot of their favourite book heroes have to do.
A lot of parents criticise World Book Day for losing its way. Have we become so obsessed with costuming and consumerism that we’ve forgotten the origins of this celebratory day are about cultivating a love of reading and discovering the magic of books?
Would we be better off encouraging book swaps, library trips and ensuring those £1 Book Tokens kids get given are used effectively? Yes, probably.
But I believe WBD’s meaning is still there beneath all the commercialisation: to instil a love of reading in the next generation.
This mission has never been more critical than at a time when only 34.6% of UK kids aged eight to 18 enjoy reading for pleasure – a key predictor of a child’s future success – according to the National Literacy Trust.
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I’m done moaning about what a nuisance WBD is. Instead, I think we should consider how passing a love of books of all kinds to the next generation and spending time reading to them instead of being distracted by a million other things can inform our parenting the other 364 days of the year.
Reading encourages empathy, understanding, curiosity, and adaptability – and research shows it can significantly improve mental wellbeing by lowering stress (among other things).
Part of the reason I enjoy World Book Day now is because I don’t care what my kids show up dressed as.
What I do care about is how WBD inspires me to go to the library, hunt for new books to read, and to snuggle close to my kids (long beyond that first Thursday in March) following along as they meet new characters and discover new worlds.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk.
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