This is controversial but I am not a fan of Book Week dress up days or parades. I think Book Week should be a celebration of books, reading, libraries and creative thinking, so in my school, as an alternate activity, I used to set four Book Week challenges. Sometimes kids worked on these during breaks and sometimes teachers allowed their class to complete a challenge in class time.
My rules are simple but of course you can set your own:
- the challenge must be completed during the school day (not at home)
- the deadline for entries is 3.25pm each day
- label your work with your name and class
- up to ten winners will be announced each morning and they will each received a small prize bag there are also certificates for highly commended and commended entries
- you can visit a showcase of entries in the library during Book Week and beyond
Here are ten challenges I have created for 2026 around the slogan 'Symphony of Stories'. Please feel free to use, adapt, adopt etc. I suggest selecting four challenges that appeal to and you could set one each day over four days of Book Week. It takes a long time (at night) to sift through the hundreds of entries but it is also fun. I think it is important to maintain the excitement by announcing winners each day and then displaying them in your library.
Here are my 2026 ideas:
Your library needs an advertising jingle – write a song using a well-known nursery rhyme tune that encourages the youngest children to read a book or borrow a book or share a book
Books can be other shapes – not just rectangles. Make a three-page book in the shape of a musical instrument – it will need a title, cover, title page, one story page and a back cover with a blurb or for bonus points make a pop-up book that looks like an instrument
Puzzle me a puzzle – use the letters of the 2026 CBCA book week slogan 'Symphony of Stories' to design a puzzle such as a find-a-word, cross word, or a code to solve
Using music staves as your lines write the first line of your story – make it large enough to fill a whole page ready to display in the library
The members of the orchestra have heaps of spare time – make a list of instruments and suggest a great book for each player to read and present your work as a poster to display in their rehearsal room
Write a short story (one page only) that features music or musical instruments (perhaps a musical instrument could be the main character)
Illustrate the book cover for a new book which features a musical instrument or a song and add the title, plus the author and illustrator names (be inventive with these names if you like).
Design a game that includes some of the 2026 short listed picture books – it might be snakes and ladders, or a simple version of monopoly, or a card game perhaps
Choose a book that can be made into a movie – write a proposal in the form of a letter to a famous movie director suggesting which book could be a movie and which music they should use for the movie soundtrack. Did you know the movie Babe uses music by a famous composer Camille Saint-Saëns and his Symphony number 3 and Star Wars uses music from Carmina Burana by Carl Orff and Bluey also has classical music in the episode called Sleepytime from a piece called The Planets. The book you choose for this challenge could be a personal favourite or even one of the 2026 CBCA shortlisted titles.
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