DRESSED as fantasy figures and characters from their favourite novels, a village primary school's pupils marked the start of National Children's Book Week by walking to school together.

Nearly 20 children from Clyst Honiton Primary, clad in all sorts of colourful costumes, gathered at the car park at the Black Horse Inn in Old Honiton Road, and then walked the remaining third of a mile to their school.

The fancy dress trek was part of the school's ongoing celebration of the book week, a scheme held in the first full week of October to encourage children to explore and enjoy books.

School administrator Alison Hutchings said: "Every term we have a walk to school day because we have a school travel plan to encourage pupils to use other forms of transportation.

"We decided to amalgamate this with book week.

"We told the children to dress up as fantasy characters or characters from their favourite books. The majority of the children took part in the walk. As for the costumes, we have got a bit of everything — cats and fairies, and some of our traveller children in the most incredible red dresses, and one of our teachers was dressed as an elf. The children had a whale of a time.

"They also watched a puppet show and did a workshop afterwards with the puppeteer.

"Today is bring your favourite book to school day, and tomorrow the Reception to Year 2 children will have a dinosaur book day, while Years 3 to 6 will be camping out in our woodland shelter and reading stories all day.

"Thursday is drop everything and read day, when children and staff will have 15 minutes of reading time at the beginning and end of the day, and parents and carers are welcome to join us."

Ten-year-old Molly Palmer, from Exeter, said she was dressed as a horse rider because she likes reading books about horses.

"My favourite books are the Molly Moon series," she said.

"I like reading because I can use my imagination."

Callum Rowe, 10, from Clyst Honiton, came dressed as a footballer.

He said: "My favourite author is Roald Dahl, and my favourite book by him is The Twits because it's funny and there are lots of disgusting things in it.

"I like reading because I enjoy discovering the story."

Janey Orchard, nine, from Broadclyst, said she chose to wear a black cat costume because her cat at home had just had kittens.

She said: "I love animal books and I like reading because you can learn a lot from books."