World Book Day - Our Favourite Books!

Tomorrow, Thursday 4^th March is World Book Day.

As a Teacher I have always loved World Book day!

Admittedly as a Teacher we usually had to dress up as we requested the children to do. I never really enjoyed this aspect but it was fun for the children to see us take the extra effort too.

I think this one year was the one that I could never really live down but personally I think I look like a great Noddy!!

I continued taking part in the day’s events when William was first at school and as a parent who would try to be original I made a Gruffalo costume; William was absolutely thrilled with it!

Move it on a couple of years and we are still avid book fans and still make a good effort at taking part within our Home Ed activities.

Today we are looking at our favourite books ahead of tomorrow’s activities. We ended up choosing one book each to focus on!

William chose the Gruffalo.

Even from a young age William has also been a great fan of the Gruffalo, hence his want to be one when he was younger!

For those who haven’t heard of the Gruffalo before I will give you a brief summary. The Gruffalo, written by Julia Donaldson, is a story of a Mouse who is walking through the woods and encounters natural predators. To escape their clutches and for him not to be eaten he tells them that he is off to meet the Gruffalo; a mystical creature of his own imagination. He manages to get away from everyone until he actually meets the Gruffalo!

He says he enjoys the story because it rhymes, features good pictures and he loves the story. His favourite part is that the Mouse is telling everyone that the Gruffalo is his friend but we are made to believe that the Gruffalo isn’t real. William says that he’s pleased that the Mouse gets away with it and actually meets the Gruffalo but he strongly disagrees that he lies at the start as he could have been caught out!

I love Julia Donaldson’s stories as an adult, teacher and as a single parent. The parenting fact is important as we find out in the Gruffalos child that he is a single dad as well as the efforts made by the stickman to return back to his family. Good parenting, good representation of Dads and importantly great for children.

James chose The Dinosaur that pooped a planet!

This is a new book for us here as James was only given it at Christmas but has since fallen head over heels in love with it.

TDTPAP is a story created by Tom Fletcher and Dougie Poynter. The Dinosaur is a friend of a young boy called Danny after his Mum decides to take him to the Science Museum the story unfolds. Danny and the Dinosaur are investigating a Rocket went it suddenly takes off into space. Whilst trying to get home the Dinosaur ends up eating everything in sight, including the rocket, the computers and even the Moon! Getting so full up the Dinosaur is bloated and left floating in space with Danny until he needs to have a poo! The sheer pressure of his bottom explosion hurtles them back to earth only to find at the end that the excess waste has been caught in Earths and the moons orbit and has created its own planet!

James loves this story mostly because of the Poo content! He also enjoys the naughty factor of the Dinosaur that seems to be getting them into more trouble step by step.

As a parent I can see the comical side of the story that would engage with smaller children who love the crude features to the narrative; this is the combined with the humour laid out.

I had difficulty choosing just one book! It is a tie between Watership Down by Richard Adams and Harry Potter 7 by JK Rowling; each provides different and well-crafted plots that keep me entertained.

This being said Watership Down has been my favourite book from a very young age and I do read it a couple of times a year!

That’s our favourite books out and ready in advance of tomorrow.

What’s your favourite book? Or, What is your child’s favourite?