March 3rd is World Book Day.

World Book Day used to be about celebrating the joy of reading, right?

Reading for pleasure is one of the best things you can do, for a number of reasons:

• It improves your knowledge and understanding of language.
• It boosts your writing skills.
• It’s fantastic for mindfulness, wellbeing and mental health.
• It’s pure escapism from everyday life.
• It’s fun!

It irks me that World Book Day has become World Costume Day instead.

My kids are expected to go to school dressed up as their favourite character from a book.

Stores are selling costumes specifically for World Book Day.

The pleasure in reading does not translate into cosplay.

And what about the introverts? Who wants to risk ridicule by going to school dressed up in a potentially embarrassing costume?

As if dressing up the children isn’t enough, this year our school invited kids to dress up a potato as a character from a book to enter into a competition.

Yes, you read that correctly.

A potato.

A best dressed potato competition.

Now, I don’t know about you, but in my opinion best dressed potatoes look like this:

Or this:

Or perhaps this:

August 20th, if you’re interested, is World Fried Potato Day, while the day before that, August 19th, is National Potato Day in the UK.

Now all we need are potato costumes for us to wear while we scoff down multiple variations of baked potatoes, fried potatoes, mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes…

Anyway, happy World Book Day and all that.

Do the right thing and go and read a book.