World Book Day 2024

Thursday 7th March 2024

One of my favourite days of the year - a day to celebrate books! Celebrated on the first Thursday of March every year, World Book Day is a day to celebrate books and a love of reading. A day to share stories with children, and encourage a love of everything books. Each year, authors get involved to write stories and £1 books are available from many major retailers. Book tokens are handed out in schools and nurseries, can be found in many magazines and even on the sides of Happy Meals, and can be exchanged in stores for one of the £1 books. Their aim is to ensure that all children can afford to own a book, encourage parents to bring children into book shops and to strengthen that love of books. Home Educators can apply for these book tokens too, however, I choose not to. I have always bought the boys one of the books each, and even before I had them, I often bought some of the books as I just love books :)

Image taken from the World Book Day website - no copyright intended

This year there were some great authors involved, and we had the usual plans to head to the bookshop to buy a book. We organised to meet some friends there for an informal story time, some activities and of course, cake in the cafe. 

Bear chose our costume theme this year when he decided that he wanted to go as Batman. While The Cub is too young to make his own choices, we dress up together. Last year Bear was Buzz Lightyear, so The Cub was of course, Woody, and Bear decided that I should be an alien. We looked good :) This year, The Cub was The Joker to Bear's Batman, and although I had no costumer per say, I did have a Harley Quinn t-shirt on, and I put my hair in pigtails. The perfect family dress up.

We headed to Waterstones in Doncaster, because that's where I work, and I had organised the activities. We met up with some home ed friends there, a princess, a spring baby, a lion, a king and Mavis from Hotel Transylvania. It was nice to meet a new friend too, another mum of a boy on the same journey as us. 

Whilst in store, we had a lovely time reading some books, including Nannie who joined us as a make-do Robin as we threw her costume together very last minute. I had organised a lovely poetry activity linked to one of Joseph Coelho's poems as he is the current Waterstones Children's Laureate, where the children drew what they could see through the window of their imagination after listening to the poem. I also did what I love doing best in store, even though I wasn't at work, and helped some of the children pick out new books! 

Image taken from BookTrust - no copyright intended

We chose our books after we'd exhausted all the activities and headed home, and of course, read our stories before bed. Bear chose Dinosaur Club on the Trail of a T-Rex, one of the early reader titles which is technically above his reading level, but as soon as I saw the titles I knew he'd choose that one. I'm happy for him to choose whichever he fancied and I will of course be reading it to him. The Cub had Elmer and the Patchwork Story which I chose, as I am a huge Elmer fan, and we cuddled in Bear's bed all together to read it. 

Once again, another epic day! 

What did you do this World Book Day, and did you dress up? 

Momma Bear x