Living in London has made me aware of all these days that I never knew existed before.  I love that London is such a multicultural epicenter, always “in the know”, so to speak, to international celebrations and events.  I’ve already mentioned International Women’s Day, then there was the International Day of Happiness on 20 March, but before both of those, on 5 March was World Book Day.  Apparently this is a big deal in the UK, and it is tradition for school children to dress up as their favorite book character.  In fact, I found an article on netmums.com (a site I refer to occasionally to help me figure out what the heck I’m doing regarding all things British) about how stressed mums get each year trying to think of new costumes at the last minute or meet the requests/demands of their children. 

“If it’s your first time as a mum facing World Book Day then you might be wondering what all the fuss is about. It sounds like such a fun lovely day to encourage a love of books and reading. Doesn’t it? If you’ve been through it before then you’ll know why it brings some mums out in a rash.”

Ahhh mommy competition spans the continents.  

In any case, since it was our first time the kids were all pretty excited, and I didn’t stress too much about how little prepared we actually were on the actual day.  So we made the best of it, and all the kids were pleased with the results.  

Cameron: Harry Potter
Eli: Sherlock Holmes
Miriam: Fancy Nancy
Simon: Fireman Sam

All in all I think World Book Day did in fact turn out to be a lovely day meant to encourage reading and a love of books. In fact the kids were each given a token that they can redeem for a free book at UK book retailers.  

Unfortunately World Book Day fell on School Picture day, in a major scheduling disaster (and yes, you can pronounce that shh-eduling if you like to read my posts with a British accent.)   I got a text about half-way through the morning informing me that school photo day was that day and the next.  I hope no one lost their job over that one.  

So the kids school photos weren’t anything spectacular, except the photo company did do sibling photos on the second day, when the kids were all dressed normally, and it turned out really great.  I’ll post it here when I get my prints.  

Happy [Belated] World Book Day everyone!