Today’s guest blog is by Alice Jenkins, who dressed as her favourite character from The Grunts, the series by Philip Ardagh and Axel Scheffler, for World Book Day.
OooooOoo! I LOVE The Grunts!!!
I chose Sunny as my World Book Day character mostly because I like him as a person. I was also inspired by going to the Imagine festival, where I enjoyed a talk with ‘that bearded guy’ about the Grunts.
Sunny’s features are not just-a-normal-boy-who-walks-down-the-street-in-football-clothing sort of looks, but with some sewing and a bit of hairspray I thought I could nail that.
We started to make my costume last Sunday. First we brought down one of my light blue dresses (one that was slightly too small for me, I’m not too sure that Mrs Grunt would mind about things that are too small for people) and got out some white felt left over from my brother Freddie’s WBD costume. Then my Mummy had the ingenious idea of pressing the felt onto wet tea-bags, so they looked very Grunt-like. After that, we sewed on the felt patches with some black thread we found at the back of my Mummy’s sewing box. Later, I discovered a black belt that had once been part of a cow-girl outfit I used to dress up in. We added that to my costume. I also made a currant bun for Fingers out of felt and beads.
The morning of WBD I got up as early as possible so I could eat my breakfast before I started to get dressed. My Mummy took me out into the garden so she could hairspray my hair to make it stick up like Sunny’s, then I went upstairs to put on my costume. My Mummy also used one of her make-up pencils to draw on freckles.
I go to Rokesly Junior School. There, every year, usually on the Friday, we have a WBD dressing up assembly. The school sits down in two halves, one on each side of the room, so a catwalk is formed in the centre. Class by class, we walk down the aisle, as our teachers call out our names and which character and book we have come as. You see many different characters.
So goodbye you old earwig, and thank you for reading my blog!
Alice, age 9 (very nearly ten!)
Thank you, Alice, for being such an excellent Sunny, and for telling us all about your World Book Day! If you’re new to The Grunts, you can read the first chapter of The Grunts all in Trouble, the first book in the series, below:
