Advertisement
Books

World Book Day: You’ve still got time for these easy and inexpensive costumes

Has your kid forgotten to tell you about World Book Day? Here are some easy costumes so you can join in the fun.

World Book Day is one of the school year’s highlights for many children: an opportunity to show off some cultural kudos with their costumes and turn the school dining room into a junior comicon. It’s basically the Met Gala for kids.

It’s not always easy for everyone, though. For some parents, World Book Day’s annual cosplay extravaganza is a nightmare, especially if they can’t afford elaborate costumes, don’t have time to prepare one, or – the old classic – their child doesn’t bother to inform them about it until the night before. No-one wants to be Lisa Simpson dressed as Florida. Some schools have even banned dressing up for World Book Day to take the pressure off.

Your support changes lives. Find out how you can help us help more people by signing up for a subscription

If you child needs a quick costume, here are some easy-to-put-together and simple suggestions to make sure your children aren’t screaming “I’M NOT A STATE, I’M A MONSTER”.

A Cat in the Hat is a good World Book Day costume

A Cat in the Hat

One of the easiest ones here. Make a bright red bow tie out of card. You can make the hat out of card, too, just create a stovepipe and colour in red rings, then attach it to a baseball cap. Black trousers and a white t-shirt over a black jumper and you’re done. Really it’s all in the face paint. Meow!

Advertisement
Advertisement

Tiffany Aching from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld

This one’s an absolute doddle. Tiffany wears a plain dress, carries a frying pan for whacking monsters and wears big boots. Paint some dolls blue with red hair to be the Nac Mac Feegle!

Horrid Henry

Horrid Henry

This one’s nice and easy and still very distinctive: blue jeans, white trainers and a blue t-shirt is all you really need. The yellow stripe can be created from paper or card. Then simply encourage your child to be awful all World Book Day!

Count Dracula

The great thing about Dracula is that no-one at school will be looking for book accuracy in the way they might with a more recent, trendier book. As far as most kids are concerned he’s just a vampire! No need to model him on Gary Oldman in the 1990s movie, just recycle last year’s Halloween costume, dab on some fake blood and… “the children of the night, what beautiful music they make.”

Advertisement

Nursery Rhyme Characters

Nursery rhymes are a classic fall back. All you need is some imagination and a few props. Send them off with a pail, a tuffet, a spider, and, boom, Little Miss Muffett. Bandage their head, and they’re Jack/Jill, tattered old dress and a broom handle with a hook on the end made from a coat hanger, and they’re Little Bo Peep.

Pippi Longstocking

Pippi Longstocking

A slightly out-of-date character (though she did recently get a refresh when Lauren Child illustrated the stories), but one that’s very easy to do. All you need to be Pippi this World Book Day is a dress, hair long enough for pigtails and some stripy socks. Easy peasy.

Wednesday Addams

The Addams family started as a comic strip, so this totally counts. Braided pigtails, a black dress (put a white collared school shirt underneath if you don’t have the right sort) and an expression of goth disdain and you’re away. You’ll get some bonus cool points thanks to the recent Netflix show.

Advertisement

The Joker

Another comic book character that is, handily, all about the facepaint. Google a picture of the Joker (there are tons of versions) and pick one you’re happy with your kid looking like. If they have some purple pyjamas then all the better.

David Tennant as the Doctor
David Tennant as the Doctor. Image: BBC

The Doctor

This one is really cheating but… there are lots of Doctor Who books, after all. If your child is a Doctor Who fan, then there’s plenty of scope. David Tennant’s tenth Doctor can be improvised with smart trousers and a shirt and tie (a jacket if you have one around) and trainers, with sticky-up hair. Matt Smith’s costume is really just a shirt, braces, a bow-tie and boots (although added points if you can find a fez!) and Jodie Whittaker’s is basically the same – just turn the trousers up a bit, find a blue t-shirt and create a rainbow on the front with some coloured paper.

Georgie from Stephen King’s It

This might not go over brilliantly with the teacher, but it’s funny for older children. If you have access to a yellow rain coat and a red balloon it’s almost too tempting. For extra thematic points, why not dress their brother up as a clown?

Advertisement

The Invisible Man

There’s two options here. Either you can bandage their face, put a pair of sunglasses on them and let them wear a hat and gloves, or you could just… keep them at home. When the teacher asks why they weren’t in school, you can can tell them they were there all along – it was just a very good costume.

Or no costume at all

At the end of the day, it is World Book Day, not World Costume Day. Just because your child’s school is doing a special thing doesn’t mean they have to. Let them go to school as they are and enjoy reading a book. Outside of school guidelines, no child should be pressured into dressing a certain way.

World Book Day is on March 2. worldbookday.com

Advertisement

Change a vendor's life this Christmas

This Christmas, 3.8 million people across the UK will be facing extreme poverty. Thousands of those struggling will turn to selling the Big Issue as a vital source of income - they need your support to earn and lift themselves out of poverty.

Recommended for you

Read All
Gliff by Ali Smith review – ingenious and warm anti-establishment storytelling
Books

Gliff by Ali Smith review – ingenious and warm anti-establishment storytelling

Ground by Jadelin Gangbo review – hope for healing amid the wreckage
Books

Ground by Jadelin Gangbo review – hope for healing amid the wreckage

Horrible Histories author Terry Deary: 'The most important day in history is tomorrow'
Books

Horrible Histories author Terry Deary: 'The most important day in history is tomorrow'

Top 5 books in rhyme, chosen by children's author Vicky Cowie
Books

Top 5 books in rhyme, chosen by children's author Vicky Cowie

Most Popular

Read All
Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits
Renters: A mortgage lender's window advertising buy-to-let products
1.

Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal
Pound coins on a piece of paper with disability living allowancve
2.

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal

Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over
next dwp cost of living payment 2023
3.

Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue
4.

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue