World Book Day

“The only thing you absolutely have to know is the location of the library.” Albert Einstein

On Thursday, King’s celebrated World Book Day. Everyone made an incredible effort with their costumes, pupils and teachers alike! Though we do think Mrs Waite did get a little carried away. It was wonderful to see such a variety of characters and authors. Many opted to come to school dressed in cosy pyjamas, ready for bedtime stories. Thank you to staff, parents and carers for all your creativity and support.

The theme of this year’s World Book Day was “Read Your Way” which calls on everyone to let go of pressure and expectations and give children a choice – and a chance – to enjoy reading for at least 20 minutes every day. The goal is to create a habit of reading for pleasure, where we read books that captivate our imaginations and take us to places we have never been before.

Lots of events took place during the day. Pre-Prep gathered in house teams for House reading to share favourite stories with older and younger children and the Year Three staff loved spending the day in Wonderland. Prep School took part in the House Competition ‘Take a Shelfie’ and pupils had great fun trying to guess whose bookshelf was pictured each day. Massive congratulations to the winning house Whiston for accumulating the most points throughout the week and a huge thank you to all the staff and pupils for taking part.

In Senior School literary characters were out in force with a trio of elves, a library of Little Misses, a Manga warrior, Dracula, Long John Silver, Jay Gatsby and Professor McGonnagal amongst other ‘Hogwartsian’ delights- and these were just the teachers! And of course, World Book Day is all about sharing our love of stories and reading and so, in the spirit of adventure, two of our classes in Remove teamed up with younger pupils in Year 4 to do just that for their English lessons today, reading together and talking about the characters and plot twists they met on the way.

In Chapel, Seniors contemplated the lessons that we can learn from powerful stories, like Tolkien’s epic fantasy, ‘Lord of the Rings’. How important and relevant are the core values resonating in Middle Earth to our world today? As the wise and loyal Samwise Gamgee says, “There’s some good in this world, Mr Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.” With courage, friendship and community, the willingness to make small sacrifices and care for our natural world, all balanced with a bucket full of hope, what can we not achieve?

If we are to continue to enjoy reading, we must also make sure that our world is full of creative story writers. And so, at lunchtime, Seniors joined the writer Benjamin Dean for a streamed lesson about his latest short story for WBD, ‘This Book is a Lie’. Giving us advice on how to write an ‘edge-of-your-seat’ thriller, we hope to see a good few more crime genre blockbusters in the future written by our future ORs.

Pupils received a £1 book token before half term which can be used between now and the 23rd March. Pupils can swap their £1 token for any of the £1 books or get £1 off a full price book or audio book. A list of participating retailers can be found here: https://www.worldbookday.com/books-and-tokens/books/participating-retailers/