The Politics of Playing Dress-Up

Well, to start off I'd like to say a happy world book day to all who celebrate. I know I haven't really posted anything on my socials about it but I'm not a jubilant kind of person. I lay low most of the time. Let's start off with a popular anecdote from the vaults...

You've heard this one before. I'm maybe 12 years' old and I'm sitting in English Class on World Book Day when my teacher gives us all a copy of All Quiet on the Western Front as it was one of the books available and she perhaps wanted to get a 'classic' for us to read. I read it. It scared the crap out of me and I went to class the next day pale as a ghost, prodding my teacher as to why I was to read something so incredibly frightening and upsetting. We were studying World War One in history, I believe, so it was fitting - it just was a bit much as well.

We didn't dress up.

We didn't have a party of any kind.

But we did get some free books and we talked about them.

Fast-forward to me at about 30 years' old and I'm (and I shit you not) dressed as Huckleberry Finn trying to teach a lesson on Martin Luther King and the Civil Right's Movement. This is not a good look. I'm wearing dungerees and carrying fishing rod. I've just had my hair cut and I'm wearing a straw hat. The urge to resist the irony was unreal. But then again, it wasn't really anything to do with the book because the little folk sitting in front of me weren't allowed to read Huckleberry Finn because some of them didn't have the reading capability.

I've also been in situations where the children were dressed up as movie characters - but then again, there was no talk about books. I've been in situations where there was absolutely nothing done for World Book Day whatsoever. Has World Book Day been commercialised so much that it is no longer actually about the books or is it something else entirely?

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1: The Literacy Crisis

We all know there's a literacy crisis. A decline and fall of reading. Nobody hates this more than I do. But to use the one day of the year that celebrates reading to play dress up is like a knife in the back. The literacy crisis I believe, was not spurned on by smart phones and social media, it was only exacerbated by it. In fact, I believe it starts much earlier: in punishment. Sometimes a child is punished with going to the library at school and sitting in silence. Library 'lessons' at school are met with repetition and boredom - fostering a sense of listlessness in children. And especially in teenagers, boredom often fosters bad behaviour and an angry reaction to the task at hand whatever it may be.

Having a World Book Day that does not focus on books therefore is harmful. We are meant to be repairing the relations between children and books, not putting pressure on parents who are already strapped for cash and time, to make and buy things for costumes worn once and then never again. I have a way around this. Novelty.

Novelty wins every single time. In this novelty move, on World Book Day we can repair relations with books by making sure each child has a library card. Perhaps having a trip to the local or city library. Events that are held at libraries are usually free. Also, teaching library manners (such as being quiet and waiting patiently) could be a lesson on World Book Day. Finally, looking at reading accessibility and how to include everyone - no matter their disabilities, in the experience of reading. Reading is very political. There are lots of things to be taught, lots of things to learn and many ways to think about it.

I am so sick and tired of seeing reading take a back seat on the very day that is meant to celebrate it.

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2: Whatever Happened to Book Tokens?

When I was young, everyone had book tokens. They'd come in cereal boxes and on children's snacks. There would be CDs for Horrible Histories audiobooks inside the Coco Pops box (I had every single one and wouldn't meet another person who did until I was on my undergraduate degree about a decade later). When you had your book tokens, you'd take them to school and they'd get new books for the library with them. This was also done for things like sports equipment and other stuff. But it was never about actually getting the book at the end. It was about including the child in the experience of acquiring the book. They were more likely to think 'hey, there's new books in the library. I collected five tokens for those. Let's go and see what's there...' And now you have a child in the library off their own accord and, thus more likely to get a book.

Involving the child in the experience of acquiring the books is important. But involved the child in the experience doesn't mean playing political dress up for commercial brownie points in the social media age as the school posts out grand photographs of adults dressed as obscurely referenced protagonists from the 19th century (if they're posting children then there's a serious problem). It means making sure there is a vantage point for the child to come into the library themselves with something to do.

I have seen (thank god) children play chess in a library. This means other children come in to watch the chess game and thus, end up borrowing a book because they find the chess game boring. This is a light example. For World Book Day, there needs to be a cultural event for literature. It needs to feel like there's something to celebrate about reading itself instead of just having parents push their children into costumes or worse yet: having the teachers dress up.

Book Tokens in the run up for World Book Day were huge and they were fun. I have to admit: I don't know where CDs in cereal boxes went. I would get so many toys, little books and audiobooks from cereal boxes - it was fantastic. The culture was at least, to get children into things that were not (back then) the television.

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Conclusions

So what do you think about World Book Day?

Is there a reason it has perhaps become a social celebration of political dress up for a school to 'show off' on social media?

Do you have any memories of World Book Day you want to share that are bizarre?

Is there anything we can do to bring it back to being a celebration of reading?