Month: October 2024

Bookish Halloween Costumes

Edited with Afterlight

(*note – this originally was published in October 2022 but always a good reminder to look to books for fun costume ideas).

This week, several friends sent me a photo of a little girl dressed up as a book fairy. Her wings were made from an open hard-cover book. Her skirt was made from loose book pages. The costume was brilliant, and I wish I was going to a Halloween party just to be a book fairy. The fact that multiple friends sent me the same image made me happy…they know me well!

This got me thinking about other bookish Halloween costumes. I know I originally said I would write about ways to bring books alive, and I will cover that more soon, although I think Halloween costumes are a perfect way to make a book come alive for a child (or teen, adult, pet, anyone). Dress up as your favorite character whether they are from a movie, cartoon, book, or comic book.

If a child likes a book series, what better way to get them even more excited about reading more in the series than for them to dress up as that character? We often see Harry Potter and Hermione, and I love that children love the characters so much that they choose to dress up like them. In our house, costumes have been some very popular book characters and some more obscure. Some of my favorite book character costumes from our Halloweens past include Gerald from the Mo Willems “Elephant & Piggie” books, a borrowed Sophie Foster costume from Shannon Messenger’s “Keeper of the Lost Cities” series (and yes, we had a friend who happened to have that costume), Katniss Everdeen from Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games,” and a group costume consisting of Hermione, Harry’s Owl (carrying a copy of the Daily Prophet), and Doby.

Some characters are challenging because their costumes look like regular clothes, so how do you identify it as a costume? Fear not, it is still possible. For many of our book costumes, I made a trick-or-treat bag. I picked up a package of plain white cloth bags and printer transfer paper. Print a full-sheet book cover onto your transfer paper and iron it onto the bag. It’s simple (although read the instructions to see if you need to flip the image before printing so you don’t have a backward book cover). The easiest way to immediately identify that the child is dressed up as their favorite book character, and that bag will likely become a favorite little book tote bag.

I can’t wait to see all the costumes, especially the book-inspired ones this Halloween. If you dressed up as a book character, be sure to share a picture. I’d love to see it!

Help me find this picture book!

I have a vague but distinct memory of a children’s picture book from when I was maybe 5 years old. My dad took me to the library and we borrowed this book. I loved the story and wanted to keep the book. My dad found it on my bookshelf and not in the bag of books to be returned to the library. I vaguely remember the discussion that followed about it being a library book and that we borrowed it, thus we must return it (which we did).

I don’t remember the title, but I’m hoping with the power of the internet, someone who reads this recognizes this picture book and can share the title with me.

The story was of a humanized rabbit family. They lived in a home and acted like humans but obviously were rabbits. One of the rabbit children really wanted a dog. His parents would not let him get a dog (dogs were still animals in the book and not humanized). The rabbit child finds a dog and brings him home. He dresses the dog up in clothes and tries to pass him off as a rabbit friend to his parents. At dinner, the dog sits at the table with the family and begins to eat the food off the plate like a dog, not like a (humanized) rabbit using utensils. At that point, the rabbit parents realize the friend is a dog but allow the rabbit child to keep the dog as a pet.

Does anyone recognize this picture book based on my description? To overcomplicate it, I haven’t seen this book since I was about 5 so my recollection could be a bit off but I’m rather confident in my description of the story.