Happy Hallloween

The school's Halloween parade has come and gone. The rain kept us inside but everyone had a wonderful time parading through the school, including a gym filled with parents.

As difficult as this may be to believe, I do not like to wear a costume and I stress more than is necessary about finding the perfect costume. This year's costume was very uncomfortable, but it provided a week of library classes. Most of the third to fifth grade classes were involved with the creation of a book costume. The continue to come to the library to see the finished product, even though it no longer graces my shoulders.



One class chose the catchy title of Linda Gets Stuck in a Book and another picked Bookabee Poochy as the suitable pseudonym for the multiple authors. Many children pointed out how this is much like the non-existent Erin Hunter who represents the team that writes the Warriors series. Which lead to a good discussion about why people would want to use a pseudonym. A third class designed the colorful cover which was In all three instances there were close votes to determine the ultimate winners. This means, of course, that there were many good ideas that could not be used this time.







Two classes were called upon for the ultimate in collaboration to create the story--or at least page one of it.

Reading the text in the picture is more than a little difficult so let me reproduce the entire text here:

One day Linda was reading a book to little green men from Venus. Suddenly the book attacked her. Linda fought back but the book kept trying to eat her. The book was too strong. Linda got pulled into the book. She tried to pry the book open but it was a like a steel trap. Soon all you could see were Linda's arms, legs, and head.

"Oh, well," said Linda, "I've always wanted to be in a good book."

Since there was nothing better to do inside the book, Linda read all of the pages. Then she got tired and fell asleep. The little green men from Venus woke her up by shouting, "Where's Linda?"

When she was awake, Linda realized that she was craving a bagel. Luckily she found one that the book had eaten earlier that week. But the bagel was stale.

Even though only her arms, legs, and head stuck out of the book, Linda walked to the store to get a fresh bagel. When she was full of bagel, she wanted some apple cider. On the way to the orchard, Linda passed a bookstore. The bookstore owner ran after her shouting, "Get back here book."

The bookstore owner caught Linda and put her on the shelf next to The Book About Books.
Two months later, a little girl came into the bookstore. She saw the book with Linda in it and thought it looked good. The little girl opened the book and
SCREAMED.

So, ends the story, unless your imagination can carry it to page two and beyond.

Referring to the picture of the open book, you will also notice that we spent some time dreaming up a publishing company. This book, copyright 2009, was published by Vampire Princess Press, a division of How to Eat a Whole Pie in Under 30 Seconds Publishers, Inc., 1877 Chicken Fingers and Fries Street, Emerson, Michigan.

The back cover was decorated by a second grade class with a few additions by others. You will notice that the price that students determined to be appropriate was $5,000,000.00 (higher in Canada). They had a hard time choosing between $0.01, $5.99 9/10, $14.99, and millions of dollars for this one-of-a-kind collaboration.


So ends the story, or does it?