Christian College’s Drysdale campus celebrated Book Week a fortnight later than most, but the parade held by staff and students on Tuesday was worth the wait.
Teacher librarian and organiser of the event, Chantelle Dalton, said the day was “really, really special”.
“We did run our Book Week parade last year, but we weren’t able to have the families involved,” Mrs Dalton said.
“This year we had parents, siblings, grandparents, just a great mixture of people joining in safely to celebrate the joy that books bring and how they can take us away to other places when we read.”
This year’s Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Book Week theme was ‘Dreaming with eyes open’, and Mrs Dalton said students and staff all got involved to bring their dreams to life through their costumes.
“It was a busy celebration of colour and excitement, the students and teachers dressed as the book characters they love,” she said.
“The children were so excited to be able to celebrate the books they love and the characters that are really special to them.”
Mrs Dalton, who dressed as a blue banded bee from 2022 Book Week honours winner The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Peculiar Pairs in Nature by Sami Bayly, was inspired by the book to help her students understand the need to care for our environment.
“My focus for my classes over the last few days was the blue banded bee and the importance of making sure we keep planting flowers to offer that environment for the bees to do their jobs, which is spreading pollen” she said.
“Van Loons, the local nursery in Wallington, so kindly donated all these seedlings, which I broke up and gave to the children to take home and plant. They can then share that knowledge they learnt about how important the blue banded bee is to our environment.
“I didn’t even know about the blue banded bee until I read Sami Bayly’s book. She’s 26 and she’s written three of these encyclopedias for children about animals. They’re just incredible, the book’s never going to stay on the shelf.”
