Ealing residents set up wonderful window displays to celebrate World Book Day and raise money for school PSA

By Dimitris Kouimtsidis

26th Aug 2021 | Local News

RESIDENTS in Olde Hanwell have set up wonderful window displays, encouraging children and parents to dress up as their favourite book characters and complete a World Book Day trail, while raising some money St Mark's School PSA in the process.

24 houses across 11 streets have decorated their windows with displays from famous books, such as The Gruffalo, Harry Potter and The Hobbit.

The displays were unveiled yesterday and will stay up until next Sunday, March 14.

Organiser Anna Elliott told Nub News: "The Christmas advent windows was such a huge success and there was a real interest in the community to do another creative project.

"My kids really enjoy dressing up for World Book Day and with schools being closed I thought it would be a good idea to set this up, so that children don't miss out on the fun of dressing up as their favourite book characters.

She put out a call among local residents to see if anyone would be keen in taking part, receiving lots of interest.

She then created a map of three trails – consisting of eight houses each - across 11 streets and allocated a book to each house to decorate their windows with displays related to said books.

The three trails are split into age groups, so that children follow the trails that contain displays from age-appropriate books.

The red trail is for early years, the blue trail is for Key Stage 1 and the green trail is for Key Stage 2.

Anna said: "The idea is that children (and parents) will go out in their costumes and try to find all the displays using their maps.

"The maps are available HERE and should be fairly easy to work out, but I've also written the house address of each display at the bottom, just in case anyone struggles.

"It helps adults reconnect with stories from their childhood and children to learn about new books that they may not have read yet".

Anna has also hanged displays of 12 book characters around Katherine Buchan Meadow for children to find, as part of another activity to do before schools resume.

The mum-of two is on the PSA for St Mark's School and wanted to combine the World Book Day trail with a fundraiser for the PSA and is kindly asking for participants to donate £2.

"Obviously if people want to donate more then that's amazing, but £2 is what the children would be paying if World Book Day was held in school as normal," she added.

If you would like to donate, click HERE.