Title: The Wildest Book Week Ever
Author & Illustrator: Heath McKenzie
Published: August 2020
Publisher: Scholastic
Readership: Children
Genre: Picturebook
Rating: ★★★★.5
RRP: $17.99
I received a copy of The Wildest Book Week Ever from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
IT’S BOOK WEEK! The time to dress up as your favourite character.
Who goes too far? Who doesn’t go far enough? And WHO will win first prize?! Find out in the wildest book week EVER!
Book Features
- From Heath McKenzie, best-selling illustrator of Andy Lee’s Do Not Open This Book!
- The perfect picture book to read during BOOK WEEK, and also for any child who just loves to dress up!
- Fits in with the 2020 CBCA Book Week theme of: Curious Creatures, Wild Minds.
- Filled with vibrant and funny illustrations, readers will have a lot of fun recognising the characters and costumes on the pages.
If you haven’t grown up in Australia, you need to know one thing: Book Week is a big deal, and has been for years. And, as a booklover from childhood to now (working in a primary school as the literacy coordinator) Book Week is inescapable for me. And I kind of love it. It’s a week in the year – usually August, although it’s been pushed back this year for obvious reasons – where schools, childcare centres, libraries, etc, celebrate the books that the Children’s Book Council of Australia have shortlisted and voted on as the ‘best’ books of the year in various categories.
This translates to a week of fun and, usually, a day when all the kids and teachers get dressed up as their favourite book characters and have a book parade!
The Wildest Book Week Ever is a relatively accurate depiction of what happens in a school when Book Week hits, as reported on by a bystander who observes all the crazy costumes that result. From the kids wrapped in toilet paper, to the ones who forget, and the ones who go WAY over the top… and the teachers who go all in and the ones who play along to keep the peace, Heather McKenzie has got this nailed.
I won’t lie: I laughed out loud. A lot.
(Mostly at myself… because, I have been there more than once!)
If you are a lover of children’s books, this is definitely one to grab, if only to identify all the weird and wacky and amazing book character costumes that the various kids dress up in. (And parents will totally relate to the very last page.)
McKenzie has gone all in to have fun with something that is an institution and he’s done it with flair and some very funny illustrations that will have most people giggling.
I can’t wait to share this one not only with my students, but also my colleagues.
Noveltea Corner 