December Book & Cookie Club: "The Island of Dr. Libris"

This month marks the 3 year anniversary of when I began facilitating Book and Cookie Club at NPL!  The past three years have gone by in the blink of an eye. The way that I plan and lead Book and Cookie is completely different and I suspect that it will continue to evolve.

We wrapped up 2018 with “The Island of Dr. Libris” by Chris Grabenstein.  “Island of Dr. Libris” is practically a love letter to readers, imagination, and books.  I thought it would be a fun read to wrap up the year.

If you are not familiar with “Island of Dr. Libris” - here is the book trailer that I made to introduce the book to the Book and Cookie Club Crew:

Activities

Icebreaker - Book BINGO

Click on photo for Book BINGO file

I like to start with an icebreaker.  We have been fortunate to get a lot of new Crew members so it is important to me to foster a welcoming community of book nerds!  I created a Book BINGO game.

To play Book BINGO, participants were given a BINGO sheet with various classic and current book covers.  Participants had to go around the room and find people that have read the books on their BINGO page. Participants were not allowed to mark their own sheet and they were limited to two signatures from each person in the room.  To win, they had to get BINGO going diagonally, vertically, horizontally, or four corners (plus free space).

Book Talk

I recently attended a training given by one of my amazing colleagues about book discussions and she inspired me to add a new component to Book and Cookie Club - “Book Talk”.  I set aside 5 minutes for the Crew to share their thoughts on the book. I created some Google Slides that posed some questions: “How would you rate this book?”, “What did you like about this book?”, and “Would you recommend this book to a friend?”  

For the longest time, I was not sure how to approach discussing and evaluating the books that we read for Book and Cookie because I did not want it to feel like school.  I wanted to maintain the fun atmosphere that I established and was not sure how to tackle evaluating the books.
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After my colleague's inspiring workshop, I decided that there was a way for me to have The Crew evaluate the books and that there was a fun way to do it.  I thought of the three questions I wanted The Crew to answer then I browsed Giphy for inspiration.

The Crew found this GIF to be funny yet "disturbing".

I am happy to report that The Crew had a lot of fun sharing their thoughts on the book and our first “Book Talk” was a big hit.  The Crew had some really great thoughts and opinions on the book and we even extended our “Book Talk” by sharing what book characters we would love to meet in real life.  

Click here to see the slideshow I created for "Book Talk" (includes GIFs & questions)

Discussion Game: LIBRIS

Originally, I was going to make a Kahoot, but it was finals week at the high school and our WiFi needed a bit of a break.  I decided to create a Jeopardy-style game but with a twist.

I purchased one of those science fair cardboard tri-folds and covered it with Kraft paper. I printed the spell book clipart from Krista Wallden onto brown construction paper to create “flaps” that I could lift up to reveal questions about the book.
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I divided the room into two teams - “Billy Goats Gruff” vs. “Three Musketeers.”

Each team selected a captain and the captains picked the questions they would like to answer - i.e. L 20.

We played until we ran out of questions.

Inkblot to Inkblot

Click on photo for Inkblot card file

The idea for this game originated from Chris Grabenstein’s website http://chrisgrabenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/SLM_Libris_EducatorGuide.pdf

To play, one participant took on the role of “judge” and held up an inkblot card to the rest of the group.  The other participants in the group looked at the inkblot and wrote down what they thought the inkblot looked like on a dry erase board.  When the judge said“GO!” the rest of the group held up their dry erase boards. The judge selected a winner based on originality or creativity.  The winner was the judge for the next round.

I downloaded the inkblot graphics from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_inkblot_test  and made them into cards.

Redesigned Book Covers

I provided books and various art materials for The Crew so that they could design new book covers that would be displayed in the library.

I made some examples of redesigned book covers and wrote up explanations of how I went about designing the new cover.  I used PicMonkey with the help of graphics from Pixabay to help me create my redesigned book cover examples.

We also discussed how the editors of a publishing company will select the cover art that goes on a book.  It is not common for an author to have input on what gets put on the cover of their book. This led to a good discussion of judging books by their covers and how that sometimes the best books have the worst covers.
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If I were to do this activity again, I would do a few things differently.  I would have The Crew go out and select a book they have already read, I would give them more time to work on their designs, and provide laptops for those that wish to design their covers digitally.

Mad Libs

I pulled up Eduplace’s Wacky Web Tales on some of our circulating iPads so that The Crew could make Mad Libs.  At this station, I made sure to include some hints and examples for the various parts of speech that show up in the Mad Libs.

Space Lizard Comic Strips

Click on photo for Space Lizard file.

I made some comic strip templates for the kids to create their own Space Lizard comics.

That's a Wrap

Click here to see my plans for this month’s Book and Cookie and the station signs for the different activities.

Our first book of 2019 will be “Phoebe and Her Unicorn: A Heavenly Nostrils Chronicle” by Dana Simpson.  I cannot wait!