THE CHILDREN at Highfield and Brookham Schools dressed to impress to celebrate World Book Day. Everybody embraced the day, including the teachers who dressed in a multitude of outfits.

Each year group at Brookham pre-prep and nursery had their own theme to follow. The nursery children dressed as characters from nursery rhymes, the Reception children as characters from traditional tales, Year 1 as CS Lewis characters, focusing on Alice in Wonderland, Year 2 as Julia Donaldson characters and Year 3 as Roald Dahl characters, focusing on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Year 1 also spent the morning preparing sandwiches and baking scones for their Mad Hatter’s Tea party.

To begin the World Book Day celebrations, Brookham children were treated to a visit from illustrator and children’s book author Guy Parker-Rees the week before. Guy told the children about how much he enjoyed drawing as a child and showed them some of his childhood drawings that his mother had found.

He also had the whole school dancing like the characters from the book Giraffe’s Can’t Dance. Guy then ran year group workshops and taught the children how to create their own characters in order to help build their stories. Guy also introduced them to the series of Dylan books that he has both written and illustrated.