We are very excitedly counting down to World Book Day 2026 which this year is being held on Thursday 5th March.

World book day aims to inspire every child to enjoy the life-changing benefits of reading for fun and as part of this we are going to be inviting the children in Cross Fell to come to school dressed as a character from our class book which is called 'The Robot and the Bluebird' by David Lucas.

This is a lovely book that tells the story of a robot with a broken heart, good for nothing but expiring slowly on a scrap heap. Then one winter's day a migrating bluebird lands on his shoulder, too exhausted to go further. The robot offers her shelter in the place where his heart used to be, and her warmth and singing and companionship stir up the last glimmer of energy the robot has; he carries her across snowy wastes to the warm south, whereupon his strength dies out finally. And there he still stands today like an old hollow tree, home every year to singing birds.

The children could come into school as a robot dressed in joggers and a top with a mask (which we can send home to decorate to keep costs down for families) or dressed in blue to be a bluebird from the story or multi coloured clothes to be one of the other bird friends in the story.

The aim of the day is to bring the story to life for the children to enjoy not to place un-necessary costs on families so please do not feel you have to buy elaborate costumes for this day just normal clothes and the robot mask would be more than enough.

We have a range of other activities planned to celebrate this day and really promote the joy and importance of reading.

More details about World Book Day and the free books that you can exchange the tokens (that the children will get on the day) can be found at https://www.worldbookday.com/

We hope that the children will really enjoy all of the fun things that we have planned for the day and the chance become one of the characters in our class story will really fire their imaginations and passion for reading!

Please let us know if you require a mask to be sent home to colour and we can pop one into bags.