If you wanted to win a prize at Masterton's Primary School dress-up day, you'd better not have gone to the closest costume hire place.
Prizes were given at the book character dress-up day to the ones who had made an extra effort and shown inventiveness, principal Sue Walters said.
The child winners
were Oliver Neems, who dressed up as Pippi Longstocking, and Reagan Morris, who was Goosebumps.
Even the adults got into the fun, with Anne Donald dressing up as Clarice Bean, and Sara Feringa, as "an interesting adaptation of Tane Mahuta, god of the forest".
"She had more pittosporum on than the whole forest and a lot of green face paint and army fatigues. It was an interesting and eclectic mix.
"The idea was for kids to dress up as a character from a book that they liked and enjoyed.
"There was an emphasis on initiative, hence we gave it to Sara for her pittosporum creation rather than going down to a costume shop and buying flash gears."
The event capped off the book fair week and attracted far greater interest than what has been shown in the past.
"Sometimes year 6s think oh, it's not very cool to dress up, but today we had pretty much 100 per cent turnout, which was great except for the principal who forgot hers."
