A local Primary School teacher has told The Watsonia Bugle that Book Week was never much of a big deal before social media arrived and gave parents the opportunity to brag about their children’s costumes. The teacher, who asked to remain anonymous, is a 25-year veteran of the education department, and claims social media may have even saved the once-struggling Book Week from extinction.
When this woman first started teaching in the 1990s, Book Week was dwindling after the halcyon days of the 1980s. She said, “It was a skeleton of what it is now. Most kids didn’t even dress up, and the ones that did had pretty basic outfits. The librarian at the school I was teaching in at the time expressed genuine concern to me about the future viability of the week.
“It limped through the 2000s but then from about 2010 it has gotten bigger and bigger each year. Like many aspects of our lives, social media has changed us so much. Kids, I mean parents, go all out now. Some of the costumes are amazing. The impact of social media is two-fold: parents want to be able to show off their kids to all their followers and/or they don’t want to be outdone on Facebook and Insta by their friends who have kids. I can confidently say that without social media there would be no Book Week these days.”
The Watsonia Bugle 