World Book Day is fast approaching and I’m so delighted my eldest got Harry Potter robes for Christmas. It’s all he wants to dress up as and he couldn’t care less that he’ll be one of a hundred of them at his school. No late-night, last-minute papier mache-ing for me.
March 5th 2020
World Book Day is such an exciting event in the school calendar where lots of schools ask their pupils to come dressed as their favourite book character. There are author visits, book readings, and costume parades. It’s a favourite in this house.
BUT and You’ve probably heard this statistic from me a hundred times before, but it never stops being important….
The numbers…
Only 5% of children’s books published in 2019 had a Black, Asian or Minority ethnic main character. The year before it was only 4%. Which means there are comparatively very few BAME characters for children to dress up as. This, coupled with the fact that school teachers are busy, and book budgets are squished, means that when some children are thinking of who they want to dress up as for World Book Day and they want to dress up as someone of their own ethnicity, they might struggle to think of a suitable costume.
More than 25% of our primary school pupils are of BAME origins. It’s 2020, we shouldn’t be in this situation, so we want to do what we can to help children see themselves or people who look like them in stories.
The World Book Day Inspiration Box
We’ve created the World book Day Inspiration Box to help teachers and pupils facing this challenge. In the box are 20 titles with characters of lots of different ethnicities and lots of potential costume ideas. We have pirate girls, grandmas, astronauts and lots, lots more besides. There really is something for everyone.
Buy it now…
The Box is available NOW, in the school section of our website and we would be delighted if you could spread the word, tell the teachers in your school so they are prepped and ready to help more children have more choice of costume, this World Book Day.
For a little look at what’s in there, watch this short film.
And please do get in touch if you have any questions at all.