SCHOOLS across the dale brought their favourite characters to life as they celebrated World Book Day.
Pupils and staff at St Mary’s RC Primary School, in Barnard Castle, donned costumes of their favourite fictional characters.
As well as Harry Potters there were characters from Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons, superheroes as well as Vikings and Romans from Horrible Histories.
Staff turned into everyone from Anne of Avonlea to a pirate from Peter Pan. Headteacher Lesley Box opted to wear pyjamas and dressing gown, ready for story time.
She said: “It’s great to see the costumes the children have made and chosen. We did say they could wear dressing gowns as if they were ready for story time.
“It’s actually very comfortable and it’s been great fun.”
In a different twist on World Book Day, pupils at Green Lane School, in Barnard Castle, were encouraged to turn potatoes into their favourite literary characters.
This led to everything from brightly coloured Mr Men through to Paddington Bear and Willie Wonka.
A judging panel, which included sports coaches, head teacher Rob Goffee and the Revd Sarah Cliff, had a hard job picking out winners for each of the six year groups.
Judges then picked out their favourite top three winners. First prize went to Reece Coleman, with his Hairy McClary. He was presented with a book On This Day. Olly Spence’s Hungry Caterpillar came second and Logan Allinson’s Tiger That Came To Tea was third.
Revd Cliff said: “It shows amazing creativity of the children, they were all absolutely superb.
“I feel it is a more inclusive way of celebrating world book day and parents don’t have to worry about making costumes.”
Children at Cotherstone Primary School used World Book Day as an opportunity to raise much needed funds for refugee children from Ukraine.
The young ones were encouraged by their school council to donate £1 and dress up as their favourite book character to celebrate the day.
Isabella, of the council, said: “We are going to donate it to Ukrainian refugees. It is not nice that children have to leave their homes because of war.”
Fellow council member Lissy added: “People are desperate and we want to help the children.”
Children from Gainford Primary School took part in lots of exciting activities to celebrate World Book Day.
They turned up at school wearing fabulous costumes representing many of their favourite characters.
Youngsters also brought in and shared their favourite books.
Class Swale chose Alice in Wonderland as their theme and played pin the tail on the Cheshire Cat, decorated spoons with their favourite characters and followed this up with a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party on the afternoon.
Class Wear listened to the story of The Koala Who Could and learnt about being resilient and coping with change.
The story inspired them to take part in reading, writing and art activities and they even learnt how to draw a Koala.
Class Tees read stories in English, then, during their French lesson, they listened to the Princesse et le Petit Pois (Princess and the Pea) learning lots of new French vocabulary. During the afternoon they worked co-operatively to tackle World Book Day quizzes with some quite tricky questions.
