Do you love or loathe World Book Day? I am firmly in the love camp but can totally understand why parents feel stressed and grumpy about it. When Molly was in Nursery and the twins had just been born there was no way I was able to make a costume – and really felt the pressure of getting something good. Luckily her school is incredibly relaxed and the majority of children wear a princess or superhero costume.
I do love it though especially if the children are involved with choosing and making the costumes. Children’s books are amazing – there are so many colourful characters and crazy outfits to choose from – there is something for everyone – if you look hard enough. I hope that even in the middle of the stress children have a conversation about the books they love and their favourite characters. Anything that fosters a love and excitement about reading is a good thing.
Anyway Molly has two favourite books at the moment – The Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton which we are reading to her a couple of chapters at a time as a bedtime story and The Cat in the Hat. After a lot of discussion The Cat in the Hat won this year – mainly because this is the first real book Molly has read on her own and she was so proud of herself.
Now the good thing about The Cat in the Hat costume is you can do quite a lot of cheating to make it easier. We used Molly’s halloween cat costume and added a strip of red material for the bow and painted on a cat face. The hat is a little tricky of course, but all it takes is red and white card. It was a very cheap costume to make – although of course there has to be a bit of stress as I only remembered to get the cat costume out of the loft at 11pm at night when I should have been going to bed. For another Cat in the Hat costume check out this amazing one from Thinly Spread (also have a look at the A-MA-ZING bookcase in the photos too).
The other thing we love about The Cat in the Hat are the cheeky twins Thing One and Thing Two. Now although they didn’t need to dress up the twins were very keen to look like Things – well one of them was. I will show more of their costume in another post – but it is sooooo cute!
If you like The Cat in the Hat you might like this simple craft we made last week.
For another costume for World Book day then see our post from last year on The Rainbow Fish
Other Costumes For World Book Day
Jokers Masquerade Costume Review
