Books and Book Week

Last week was Book Week and E's first book week parade. Feeling lazy, my two costume suggestions were for characters of which I knew we could pull together a costume from stuff we already have - an elephant from Babar or Angelina Ballerina (also books she really likes so I didn't feel too bad about it!) She initially chose Queen Celeste then changed her mind and went as Angelina. One pink ballet dress, a headband with some cardboard ears, a stocking tail and eye-liner nose and whiskers and she was a happy and very cute dancing mouse. We got to school not knowing quite what a book week parade entailed - and it was great! The theme of this year's Book Week is "connect with reading" and the previous week we had been asked to write down the title and author of E's three favourite books on strips of paper. (She initially claimed bloody Peppa Pig is her favourite - objectively not even true! - but was then persuaded to write down Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Imagine (Alison Lester) and ... something else, I can't remember what we actually wrote, I know Milly Molly Mandy and My Naughty Little Sister were contenders.

It turned out every child in the school had done this, and some poor teacher (or hopefully maybe some older kids?!) had strung the strips together into enormous paper chains. The chains were suspended from a central maypole thing in the undercover area, and each class sat underneath one of the chains. Year 7 student councillors were in charge of setting up, and they introduced each class and "interviewed" each child, asking them who they were dressed as and things such as why they like that book, before each kid paraded around the circle. That's right, every child in the school got to announce, in front of the rest of the school who they had dressed up as. It brought home how pleased we are to have E in a comparatively small school (about 250 kids) as in many schools this simply wouldn't be possible. After the parading had finished there was a morning tea fundraiser and E was very pleased and excited to be able to have me stay for a cupcake and a juice. The whole event was really lovely with a really nice vibe about it. We sent an email to the principal saying how pleasantly surprised we were by all the effort that had clearly gone into organising it.

C and I recently went to baby rhyme time at one of the local libraries. I used to take baby E to this quite often but hadn't been for a long time for obvious reasons. We liked it! Lots of face to face bouncing and singing and smiling time. While we were there I had a quick flick through the shortlisted picture books that were on display. Banjo and Ruby Red, Kissed by the Moon and Silver Buttons may make an appearance in C's Christmas stash. For a full list of the shortlisted books click here.