Styling Librarian: World Read Aloud Day and World Book Day Celebrations

Well, first year at a new school, would you want to start off with a book character dress up day? I would!

I loved the programs and activities I ran through the years at my old school and decided this year to honor past practice with a little personal spin here and there without overdoing things. We decided to celebrate the talent of parents and staff skills with speaking another language and welcomed readers sharing some terrific books all through the week in different languages. Some students attended the read alouds that matched their mother-tongue language and then others joined in to enjoy a read-aloud in a different language. Here are some of the languages shared (this will continue in future weeks as well, every day can be a read-aloud day!): Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Swahili, Swedish, Japanese and Dutch. Grateful to the volunteers who shared the books!

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So, I never honestly ran a book character dress-up day before. Seriously! Can’t believe it!

My students are excited about dressing up or dressing down instead of dressing in uniforms… I enjoyed experiencing my son’s enthusiasm… First he told us he wanted to be Albus Dumbledore, switched to a dragon like Smaug, then started listing basic characters like main ones from A-Z Mysteries so that he could just wear everyday clothes. In the end we agreed on Charlie Bucket because he could wear basic clothes and just get him a golden ticket! Nice, simple, and easy. (Then he decided to make a chocolate bar with his dad the morning of, the perfect addition!)

Well, the topic came up in a planning time with a few colleagues and one said to me “Your costume has to be THE BEST”… Oh. Ok. And I left my favorite costumes in the US and donated some. Sigh.

So I reached out to Twitter. – What I’ve found is my best resource for access to brilliant, creative, like-minded people. Here were responses:

Then thought and thought. I really wanted to dress up as a nasty Mrs. Alvarez and match up with the book Miss Nelson is Missing, but decided I didn’t want to wear things on my face all day.

Then I thought about Where’s Wally/Waldo and how I could find striped clothing and a fun hat… finding clothing already is an issue, hit or miss.

Then I thought about being The Cat in the Hat– I did dress up this way numerous times through the years until I had the opportunity to work with a principal who liked dressing up as him each year much to my happiness.

I thought about those costumes that I dreaded putting on and flat out refused some years from Scholastic Book Fairs…

Then I went searching for brilliant ideas on the internet… specifically Pinterest… Thank goodness for Pinterest:

http://pinterest.com/alascatfsu/literary-character-halloween-costume-ideas/

Then from Pinterest I spun off to such fantastic ideas, my brain was sparking!

Here was my favorite blog post, can anyone guess who I decided to try out/copy?

http://www.helloliteracy.blogspot.hk/2012/03/one-crazy-week.html

I also was impressed with this collection of ideas:

http://www.netmums.com/activities/fun-at-home/reading-together/world-book-day-dressing-up-ideas

Of course, there’s always Martha Stewart who can give costume advice:

http://www.marthastewart.com/268173/hoodie-costumes-little-red-riding-hood-a?&backto=true&backtourl=/photogallery/homemade-kids-halloween-costumes

Then there was a 10 minute halloween book character costumes, those didn’t fit me too well, adult-adult…

http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/10-minute-literary-halloween-costumes-dress-like-your-favorite-character

Finally, I decided to gather materials at the Hong Kong dollar store, fun to find random materials that led to a costume celebrating the fantastic Pete the Cat by Eric Litwin and James Dean with my wonderful library assistant… *We did look around for Lunch Lady costume components, no luck to find yellow aprons in Hong Kong. I did find blue aprons and gloves but that didn’t feel exact enough.

We enjoyed seeing various children dressed in everything from the character Kate with her pail from The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart to Ruby Lu, Star of the Show by Lenore Look. We loved the celebration of literature. My assistant is a talented photographer, so we tried to capture different moments through the day. Here’s a little movie we created to celebrate creations.

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