Has World Book Day become a 'horror show'?

"What began in 1998 with Tony Blair standing in the Globe Theatre to announce a new celebration of books has morphed into something much bigger," said William Cash in The Spectator. World Book Day, which sees schoolchildren dress up as their favourite book character on the first Thursday in March, "aims to promote reading for pleasure", said London's The Standard. But schools are increasingly adopting a "more flexible approach", either by ditching "best dressed" awards or abandoning costumes altogether, in response to "growing pressure on parents".

'A bit like childbirth'

World Book Day – those three words are "enough to make most of us break out in a cold sweat", said Nadia Cohen in Metro. Nobody would argue with the "push to promote children's literacy", nor with the almost 15 million £1 book tokens distributed every March. But WBD has "descended into an annual horror show of competitive costume-making, and almost every parent I know hates it with a passion". And let's not pretend it isn't "mostly mums doing the heavy lifting". In that way, WBD is "a bit like childbirth".

It's not just the gender disparity, said Emma Kernahan in The Independent. What's "always overlooked" is that costumes require time or money – or both. And that "that cost is not felt equally". A decade of austerity, a pandemic and a cost-of-living crisis have put nearly a third of children below the poverty line – the very inequalities that WBD "sets out to tackle". Something about "frantically buying disposable merch" from Amazon Prime rather "goes against the spirit of the day".

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

'Discovering the magic of books'

Here's an idea for parents, said Jen Barton Packer in Metro: "do as little as possible." Don't buy anything; don't make anything. After all, the point of WBD is to "instil a love of reading in the next generation". That has "never been more critical", given that only 34.6% of UK kids enjoy reading for pleasure, according to the National Literacy Trust.

WBD still "inspires me to go to the library, hunt for new books to read, and to snuggle close to my kids" while they "discover new worlds". Have we become so "obsessed with costuming and consumerism" that we've forgotten that WBD is about "discovering the magic of books"?

I too loved WBD and would hate to see it die, said Esther Walker in The i Paper. But it "needs a shake-up". What if children recommended books to one other, like a Secret Santa? Not just fiction, either: the emphasis on costumes has "skewed" WBD towards imaginary worlds, leaving children who prefer non-fiction "cold".

Whatever happens though, the costumes "need to go". Children will either love fiction, or they will "read set texts under sufferance" – and "no amount of Harry Potter costumes can change that".