The costumes were certainly out of the ordinary, but schools enjoyed a joyous dose of normality this week when they celebrated Book Week. Not online. Not at home. But in real life.
Colourful Book Week parades took place across playgrounds, basketball courts and halls throughout the ACT, as parents watched on and enjoyed all the creativity and genuine excitement the event inspired.
The students dressed as their favourite character from a book, showed incredible ingenuity - with a parent behind the scenes no doubt exhausted to have survived another Book Week.
At St Monica's Primary School in Evatt, there was a host of activities during Book Week, including author visits, the launch of a Street Library and even the involvement of some students in shadow judging for the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year awards.
The book council is the body that stages Book Week, something it's been doing since 1945.
This year's theme was "Dreaming with eyes open...."
St Monica's school librarian Veronica Melville said the return of the traditional Book Week parade in the playground on Thursday morning had been "wonderful".
"Because it is 2019 since the last time we were actually able to share this celebration with parents. Last year, the children got to share it within their class on Teams. Which, really, yes, they were dressed up but we didn't really do it," she said.
"So, I think, there was that extra joy of being able to really come together and do that celebration. We're really a community celebrating this again because we have missed being able to do that."
Ms Melville said Book Week brought the school community together.
"It very much gets the families involved because they are working together on those costumes. We talk very much about that recycling, upcycling for the costumes and really being imaginative," she said.
In a world dominated by devices, this week honoured that connection between the reader and the page.
"For St Monica's, it really is a celebration of their love of reading, their love of good quality books and literature" Ms Melville said.
"We particularly focus around those short-listed books at this time of the year that the Children's Book Council has short-listed.
"So it really is just time to enjoy our reading and the wonderful books we have here in our library."
Other schools celebrated in their own style as well.
And it wasn't just the big kids who got involved.
Canberra author Samantha Tidy was thrilled when she was sent a photograph of a little fan dressed as the character in her book, Our Bush Capital.
"It's the most magical compliment an author or illustrator can receive," she said.
"Something from your own imagination has become solid in someone else's reality - it's a lovely surreal feeling."
ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr also read Our Bush Capital online as part of Book Week celebrations.
