On Thursday 2 March, we joined many schools in celebrating World Book Day. The day was launched in 1997 with the purpose of changing lives through a love of books and learning and promote reading for pleasure.
The St John’s School community enjoyed a number of activities throughout the day and relished in the opportunity to wear outstandingly creative costumes from their favourite books! Characters from a wide variety of novels were in attendance including Mrs Trunchbull, Cruella de Vil, Great Gatsby, The White Rabbit, and Violet Beauregarde. Whilst many pupils and staff were adorned in costume, the love of books could be felt across all areas of the School with classroom doors decorated with book covers, and the dining hall decorated with book bunting.
At lunchtime, our brilliant Catering Department created a spectacular World Book Day themed lunch with The BFG ‘snozzcumbers’, Harry Potter’ butterbeer’, The Twits squiggly spaghetti and even a much nicer version of Oliver Twist’s gruel!
There were several exciting competitions for pupils and staff, with everyone encouraged to take part and identify which eight literary characters had been invited for dinner from the clues and props at the dinner table. Fourth Form have been taking part in genre bingo during their library lessons, with the aim of reading twenty books across twenty genres! Families were encouraged to take part in a special family literary quiz. Each competition encouraged great discussions over favourite books, different genres, and exciting characters.
Across the UK, it is reported that nearly 500,000 young people do not have a book of their own¹. We would love to see more young people developing a life-long love of reading. In recognition of the importance of reading, our non-uniform World Book Day is raising money for a fantastic charity that supports the improvement of pupil literacy across the country – The National Literacy Trust. We have also launched a Book Donation Drive, in which we are encouraging our pupils to bring in up to three books for any age range to donate to The Children’s Book Project, a charity which delivers books to disadvantaged children in Surrey and London and Surrey.
¹Source: World Book Day
