#RoaldDahlDay Veruca Salt Cosplay

On Wednesday it was Roald Dahl Day. What’s Roald Dahl Day? 13th September would have been the famed authors birthday and each year it’s celebrated as Roald Dahl Day, and this year would have been is 100th birthday making it extra special. Little Miss’ school celebrated a day late (as they all have PE on a Wednesday) but the children and teachers were all dressed up as characters from the books. My cousin is working there as a teacher and was dressed as Matilda, and her head teacher was dressed as Fantastic Mr Fox (although I think it was a missed opportunity for her to be Ms Trunchbull). Of course, LM had to dress up, she lives for dressing up days at school but since she’s only seen movie versions of James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory since she’s not quite up to the reading level of Dahl’s books yet I wasn’t sure who she’d want to be. So she left it in my hands and thanks to Bee at Closet Geek she managed to whip up a dress of my favourite Roald Dahl character, but we’ll get to that.

As a kid I loved Roald Dahl books, they made the kids into heroes (well most of them) and the adults into deplorable human beings. Animals were also heroes like in James and the Giant Peach and Fantastic Mr Fox, and just like LM, I was a huge animal lover. I remember the first time I saw the movie Witches and I was absolute terrified, I think I was about 8. Because of this I put off reading the book til I was 10 or 11 even though I’d long read all the other books. My favourite book was always Matilda. I so badly wanted to find out I had magical powers like Matilda. One of the first books I ever read myself was The Twits, and it still makes me laugh. I even loved Revolting Rhymes, my sister and I can still recite a lot of them too.

Since becoming a parent I’m always looking forward to the time when Roald Dahl will also become a part of LM’s childhood. Although she has seen some movies, she’s not quite up to the books yet but something that has stuck with me about Roald Dahl are famous things he said. He had some great ideas about children and childhood that has even influenced some of my parenting ideas.

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely

Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog.

So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.

A little magic can take you a long way.

Inspired by Roald Dahl’s writings, I’ve always wanted to make LM’s childhood as magical as possible, to the point it’s worthy of a story. Because like depicted in his books, being an adult is no fun! Magic is everywhere, you just need to look for it. But some of the best magic of all is in the pages of a book.

Anyway, my favourite character created by Roald Dahl is Veruca Salt.. well it’s actually Matilda and Veruca, but I knew there would be hundreds of Matilda’s at school so we went with Veruca. She’s so deliciously spoilt and her iconic “I want it now!” just isn’t something I have ever heard out of LM’s mouth so I thought it would be a fun dress up idea for her. She really doesn’t have a spoilt or entitled bone in her body which is a huge contrast to Veruca Salt. But she managed some pretty madame like faces while we were getting ready for school, I’m so proud.

Unfortunately, I think she’s a little too cute and smiley to be Veruca Salt on a regular basis, and even when she looked through the photos after I took them she told me she liked the ones where she looked happy better than the ones where she was acting like a madam. Maybe next year we’ll go for Sophie from the BFG.