Book week hell. You know it, if you’ve experienced it. The dread of confronting your own creative limitations as you face expectations of what magical artwork you can deliver to delight your kid(s).
This year, the dread I experienced was, mercifully, contained to one hellish morning.
My older boys informed me it was Book Week parade day on Tuesday, around 45 minutes before they were due to be at school in character. I then remembered the emails, printed signs, WhatsApp messages and other reminders sent to parents. I paused to consider that familiar question again: How do I still manage to fail to keep up with this stuff?
The boys also reminded me that store-bought costumes don’t win prizes.
The judges want to see sweat. They want homemade outfits featuring recyclables and sustainable unicorns with solar panels and absolutely no waste or carbon emitted at all in the supply chain or assembly process. I told them not to worry, they wouldn’t have a hope of winning a prize anyway.
At that point, in the midst of the weekbix mess and chaos, the four-year-old piped up to also let me know it’s book week day at his pre school. Of course, this tiny human, whom I’m sure has no idea what Book Week actually entails, is better across these things than I am.
Three costumes are required, now with 38 minutes to go. The morning meeting has been cancelled, and I’m ignoring our team’s various Slack messages.
Thankfully, the youngest is very happy to dress as Spiderman or Darth Vadar or (his latest) a “Matilda” every day of the week, and didn’t have ambitions for much else on his book day. So he was out the door and done, dressed as Sam Kerr, whom I’m pretty sure has been a character in various kids’ books or possibly written books. And if she hasn’t already, she most certainly will in the future.
That left 30 minutes for the other two.
My eldest is bordering on the “too cool” age, where some kids would prefer to just go to school in their uniforms. A ferocious reader, he can quickly think through several different character options and explain to me what they would wear. He rattled off the list, and I stopped at the one that wore washing up gloves and a sign around his neck. That one! I said. That one’s perfect! And so he walked out of the house with a cardboard sign and yellow washing-up gloves. It all made sense to him.
Two down, one to go: the middle child. By now, he is jumping up and down anxiously, “But what am I going to wear?” He runs to his room to produce a copy of Robodog, featuring (as you might expect) a robotic-looking dog on the cover. Awesome. I found some foil – not so environmentally friendly – and wrapped it around anything I could find: his t-shirt, a couple of toilet rolls for a tail, and something scooped from the recycling bing for a dog nose face mask. There were staples stapled, and a horrific amount of frantic sticky tape stuck, followed by some phone camera snaps to reassure him that it looked excellent. Done.
I love the idea of Book Week, and encouraging kids to get into the characters of their favourite books literally, and to celebrate storytelling and reading.
But it’s a labour-intensive tradition that hasn’t kept up with the demographic shifts in how we work and the increasing loads that mothers take on, which is likely why retail outlets like Big W are jumping on the cause and now selling Book Week outfits. Unlike trends in corporate paid parental leave, there also doesn’t appear to be any significant increases in Dads taking on the Book Week costume-making/organising load.
As expected, my kids did not return home with any prizes on Tuesday. I don’t know which outfits won the various prizes, nor did I see the book parade to gauge my minimalist efforts compared to those of other parents, because I had to go to work.
What I do know is that the greatest book week shame of my time as a parent came the day that my eldest child, on his first day of kindergarten, actually DID win the prize. Why the shame? Because I’d totally cheated.
I had procured his outfit the night before after sending frantic messages to family members to see if anyone had something that could be repurposed.
As I arrived at the home to collect the offered costume, I hesitated, not expecting the most exquisite homemade outfit I could imagine. “I can’t take this,” I said. “He will win.” Desperate, and with the then six year old by that point already trying it on and being extremely happy with the result, I took it anyway.
He did win. And multiple parents came and congratulated me as I covertly tried to exit the school grounds as quickly as possible.
The lesson? Expect that at least some people will pull whatever shortcuts and quick wins they can do to pull off Book Week. Life is hectic enough, without having to take up costume-making.