It’s Book Week here in Australia. For 65 years, we’ve been celebrating children’s books with a different theme each year (this year it’s “Across the Story Bridge” - erm, whatever that means.) To celebrate, my kids’ school is having a huge book sale in the library all week, and on Tuesday they got to go to school dressed as their favourite book characters.
Child #1, the nearly 12 year old, went as a character from THE ENEMY by Charlie Higson. He informs me that it’s a post apocalyptic YA horror novel set in London, in a world where all the adults have been infected by a disease that basically turns them into zombies (“like you’re not already” he added, with a pre-teen roll of the eyes. Lord, help me.) He had great fun creating his costume, ripping holes in an old pair of jeans, smearing dirt on his face and constructing a faux sling shot out of a coat hanger (yeah, keep up that sass, boy, and that’s what your life will be reduced to …)
Child # 2, my nearly ten year old, went as … Sir David Attenborough. Yep. That's right. The octogenarian broadcaster, author and naturalist. Child #2 is the child who cannot make it through a work of fiction without yawning at least fifty times (how is he my child? HOW??? Oh, right, he’s also his father’s) but who devours books on black holes, lizards, quantum physics, dinosaurs, the Hadron Collider and giant squid like there’s no tomorrow. So no fictional characters for him, no siree. And as Sir David, he wore his father’s old scout khakis, a pair of binoculars, stuffed his pockets with his plastic lizard collection and plastered down his hair in his best imitation of an old man comb-over. (The binoculars came home in three pieces, I might add. Ahem.)
And child # 3 went as Sleeping Beauty. She got a princess costume from her grandparents for her birthday and none of her friends had been impressed by it - I mean, seen it - yet. Nuff said.
What else? Oh, I'm reading a fabulous book right now, CASANOVA by Andrew Miller. Such evocative writing ... ah, I'm loving it. If only I could write half as well ...
Also lodged in my brain is a hilarious cartoon from Hyperbole and a Half, about adding caveats to the wish you make upon a star. It cracked me up. And strangely, the lawyer in me can see the sense in it …
And because I’ve been spending nearly all my time with my head in the nineteenth century, this Youtube clip has stuck with me all week - a montage of Victorian blokes who are very easy on the eye (and pinched mainly from Jane Austen films) running around smouldering in their top hats and tight breeches and cravats, and set to that well known, nineteenth century ditty, “It’s Raining Men.”
About the only snip missing is Colin Firth emerging from the water in THAT white shirt.
Hang on, here he is ...
Sigh.
Over and out.
that was a lot of fun. thanks
ReplyDeletep.s. my 12 year old went to his school for book day as Dumby Red from Deadly Unna, (excellent book) though he toyed with the Higson character..
ReplyDeleteOh...an Austen montage. Awesome. :)
ReplyDeleteShucks, I wish my school'd had dress as a character from a book day!
ReplyDeleteJane - thanks for dropping by, and commenting. :-) Can't go past a good Austen Montage, I must say. And I hadn't heard of Deadly Unna - I'll have to check it out for my almost 12 year old. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteJen - Oh yes. :-)
Deniz - It was AWESOME fun. I distinctly remember going as Trixie Belden one year ... (g)