Easy Book Character Costumes

This post is brought to you by a frantic mom who realized she needed easy book character costumes at 8pm the night before said costumes were needed. If you’re that parent right now, I’m here to help. You can make anything out of cardboard, paper plates, and a little paint. Hopefully your kiddo loves Mo Willem’s pigeon books as much as mine! Here are two easy book character costumes to whip up the night before book character day at school.

Here are the book character costumes I made:

The Pigeon from Don’t Let The Pigeon Drives The Bus
The Little Chicken from Interrupting Chicken

Pigeon Costume Materials

2 Paper plates
Hot Glue Gun
Paint brush
1 Skewer (Could also use popsicle sticks, Chop sticks, or a stick from outside.)
White, mint, black, and gold acrylic paint
Scissors

How to Make a Pigeon Costume

Step 1 – Paint one paper plate mint green

My goal here was actually to match the color of a dress that I knew was in my daughter’s closet so she could wear it with the pigeon costume. The pigeon is actually more blue than mint. Also, if your paper plates are thin, consider gluing a few together so that it holds up better once painted.

Step 2 – Make the eye and beak

While you’re waiting for the first plate to dry, cut the center of the second plate out for the pigeon’s eye and beak. Cut the center of the plate into a beak and eye for the pigeon.

Step 3 – Paint the beak and eye

Again, I mixed a few paints to get the golden shade of yellow you see on my pigeon’s beak. For the eye, I painted a round circle in the upper part of the white paper plate oval.

Step 4- Paint a border

Use a small brush and paint a black border around all of the pigeon costume pieces.

Step 5 – Assemble the pigeon mask

Use a hot glue gun and attach the eye and beak to the painted paper plate. Then hot glue a skewer to the back of the paper plate to make it a mask. I cut the skewer in half and attached the pointy side to the mask.

The Interrupting Chicken costume took a little longer to make, but well worth the extra effort. I mean look at this little chicken!

Little Chicken Costume Materials

Large peice of cardboard
X-ACTO knife
Pencil
Red, orange, yellow, white, and black paint
Paint brush
3 skewers
Hot glue gun

Step 1 – Draw a little chicken outline

As you can see from the picture below I used the image on the front cover of the book for the costume. I free handed the basic outline with a pencil.

Step 2 – Cut out paint little chicken

I used an X_ACTO knife to cut out my chicken shape from the cardboard, and painting the chicken is the best part! Don’t forget to add white highlights, they really made the chicken come to life!

Step 3 – Add the Handle

Since the chicken is much bigger than the pigeon I ended up using 3 full length skewers. If I had more time, I likely would have had my son find a good stick from the backyard to use as a handle.