The sorry tale of every mother’s greatest test: World Book Day
How was World Book Day for you? Did you hand-crochet a beard for a Karamazov brother? Rustle up a Moby-Dick costume from papier-mâché and poster paints? And did you then post on social media a picture of your little bibliophiles in their finery? (“I tried to explain to Esme that Frankenstein is actually the doctor, not the monster – but she insisted! #modernprometheus”.)
If so, you are both my hero and my sworn enemy. Some schools, including my children’s, are doing World Book Day today instead of yesterday, which means I had a whole 24 hours in which to gawp in mingled awe and horror at your immaculate Mogs, Hagrids, Hiccups and Grinches parading across Facebook, before turning my own cack-hands to the costumier’s art.
On the plus side, this means I had some warning. Normally our World Book Day preparations begin at 8.45 am, just as I am fastening the last velcro strap on the last child’s shoe, ready to leave the house. “Mummy – you forgot!” someone will suddenly reproach me. “It’s World Book Day today. Can I be Steve from Minecraft?”
Three minutes of frantic digging through the dressing-up box turns up an egg-stained Snow White costume, a too-small Spiderman and a Wolverine with a missing claw. Fairytales and comics count as literature, right? No time for make-up, run children or we’ll get a late slip, no one cares about your costume anyway, it’s just a bit of fun – oh look, there’s Jacob from 3b in a hand-sewn Gollum outfit. What a clever mummy he must have!
World Book Day is, by the way, entirely the responsibility of mummies. I don’t believe this was ever formally ratified by law, but it is a fact. No father of my acquaintance has ever sat up all night trying to fashion Long John Silver’s wooden leg out of a kitchen roll tube. They have plenty of opinions, of course. “It doesn’t count unless you make it yourself,” proclaimed my husband (currently on a spa minibreak in Devon) when I confessed I was hoping to buy Aslan’s mane online. But make it from what? Shredded cardboard? Spaghetti? My own hair?
This is the sternest test of motherhood in the school calendar. All the traditional feminine accomplishments are required: novel-reading, needlework, painting (of faces rather than canvases), slavish devotion to one’s brood. For working mothers such as me, it is the fulcrum for every strand of parenting neurosis. Are the other mothers judging me? Should I pack in work and get more involved with the school? Does it matter that all our dressing up gear is branded nylon from global entertainment corporations? Who is Steve from Minecraft anyway, and what does he want with my child?
None of which is the fault of World Book Day per se. Now more than two decades old, Unesco’s annual celebration of reading is a lovely idea, and a huge international success. The £1 book tokens that are distributed in schools can be life-changing: a poll last year found that 25 per cent were used by children to buy their first book.
Anything that gives books prominence over screens, even for one day, does a service to children. And the pressure on mothers may start to ease now that big business has started cashing in. You can already buy Horrid Henry, Gangsta Granny, Matilda and Mr Fox costumes on Amazon. But not, I am pained to discover, Aslan’s mane.