Book Week rolls around again, and with it comes the predictable chorus of strung-out parents who have no time to read books themselves but are tasked with “inspiring a love of literature” in their kids. How? By dressing them up as characters from children’s books. For an entire week! Why? I’ve been a rabid reader my whole life and have not had to don a Thing 1 or a Thing 2 costume. Not even once, not a single try, not a once in the wide open sky!

Seeing a parent reading is more important than fancy dress. Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

In primary school, I wore colonial garb when we visited the now-defunct Old Sydney Town, but I can’t remember it inducing a passion for history. Watching prisoners being sentenced and whipped was certainly eye-opening for a five-year-old. Robert Hughes described it as “the only theme park in the world devoted to punishment and repression”, so if anything, it might have awakened my darker impulses. But all I wanted to colonise was an ice-cream.

I’m not against dressing up; as a self-confessed drama nerd, I love it. Give me a mullet wig, and I’ll give you Rhonda, a chain-smoking Avon representative and........

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