Parent life / One week in March 2023
A Potato Cannot Play Voldemort, Because of the Nose
Some British schools now celebrate World Book Day with decorated potatoes instead of costumes. One family's daughter cast hers as the Dark Lord, and the trouble started at the face.
World Book Day, in Britain, is the day children dress as a character from a book. The charity that runs it also suggests alternatives for schools that want to skip the costumes: a cardboard prop challenge, pajamas and a bedtime story, or transforming a potato or a wooden spoon into a book character.
Potatoes have caught on. In February 2025 a primary school in Frodsham, Cheshire, sent home a letter inviting children to make a potato character for a home competition, with winners from each year group announced at the World Book Day assembly. The letter adds that there would be extra potatoes for any parents who would like to enter the parent competition.
There is a parent competition. Of course there is. There always was. This one is just honest about it.
In March 2023, a parent posted their family's potato online. Their daughter's school had skipped costumes for potatoes, and the daughter had chosen Voldemort. The family split the work. Someone stretched a balloon over the potato for the smooth, pale, noseless look. Then someone drew a nose in pencil, and it was the wrong nose. Voldemort has slits. This one had a proper nose. An eraser was not an option, because rubbing pencil off a balloon smudges it, and the nose stayed.
A potato, left to its own devices, is mostly nose. Voldemort's entire look is the absence of a nose. It is the worst casting in the history of vegetables.
A commenter suggested a name: Spud-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. A couple of days later the parent reported back that it was on a card next to him.
Last year the youngest, then six, was assigned a decorated egg for a reading week. She chose the Very Hungry Caterpillar. This was a mistake, because an egg is round and a caterpillar is long. My wife suggested three eggs in a row. The middle one suggested a single egg as the caterpillar before he hatches, which is in fact how the book begins. The youngest liked that. She drew a tiny face on it and a speech bubble that said "I am hungry."
It was the egg's best day. Better than breakfast. I would say the same about the potato, which spent a week in a cape when it could have been mashed.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- Reddit parent account: a World Book Day potato, March 2023 reddit.com
- Frodsham Primary Academy: World Book Day letter, February10,2025 frodshamprimaryacademy.co.uk
- UKParenting: World Book Day2026 experiences reddit.com
- World Book Day: Social reading activities worldbookday.com