Back Room Kids-Meeting October 27, 2011.

The meeting was SPOOKTACULAR! Started off by decorating ghost and pumpkin cookies and gathering in book reviews (stay tuned for those). There was gnashing and gnawing as the decortating carried one with every making use of the brains, eyeballs, fingers and skulls provided to make the cookied truly horrific. Can you say...zombies in the house? I had no idea.

That took up most of the meeting and we had just a bit of time left to build our spooky story.

Started off the story with some inspiration from Alvin Schwartz’s book SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK. It has a really short ghost story that goes something like this:

One night a girl was taking a short cut through the cemetery. She caught up with another girl and said, “Can I walk with you? Graveyards scare me.” “Of course!” replied the other girl. “They use to scare me, too, when I was alive.”

(Eek! In the ten minutes we had left for the meeting we decided to carry it on from there with every one sharing possible directions to send the story in. This is what we came up with and remember this is a first draft, some kids have taken this home and are working on revising! )

The girl asked “What do you mean you’re not alive?” Then she screamed so hard she died.


Actually people just thought she had died, but had just fainted.


When she woke up and found herself in a coffin underground.


The first thing she saw in the coffin was the other girl and who said, “I’m sorry.”


Banging on the coffin door the girl tried to make it budge, no luck it wasn’t going to open.


She thinks, after failing to open the coffin door, wait it’s underground how can I breathe? Gasping for air, the girl was slowly losing time.


She could hear chanting from above, she thought it was the girl from the graveyard. She slipped off into the darkness. She had officially died. She was officially a ghost.


She awoke, her white snowy eyes opened and she lifted out from the coffin. It was 500 years into the future. By then the girl was very old and frail…and dead. A ghost, walking in the graveyard…waiting for the next girl to come along.

Stay tuned for further revisions and illustrations from some of the talented artists in the group!

Next week we the entire meeting will be all about writing, illustrating and sharing. We will be featuring the book SPILLING INK.

In the meantime we invite you to check out the Spilling Ink blog...it is inspiring, fun and filled with great ideas for young writers.

And finally, I ran out of time to let the kids know that our book club discussion book for December (want to give everyone enough time to read and re-read in some cases) will be SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS, The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket.  

It was one of the top two choices of all the kids present at the initial meeting and discussion. We are ordering extra copies. Looking forward to lively meeting of talk and activities related to the book. Will also include a book to movie discussion related to this particular series.

Back Room Kids-Meeting October 20, 2011.

Beginning with the same old same old-snack and drinks. But really, that never gets old! Donuts, bananas and apple juice were in the house.

As the kids arrived they were invited to pick from a pile of new books (some in our library collection and yet to be signed out, some from Deb's personal library). They each took a form to write up a mini-review (or should we say mini-view?) of the title chosen. Stay tuned for those next week.

Once we were all settled work began on recording some video reviews of recent reads with everyone sharing a book, why they liked it and why they think you will like it, too. We brainstormed how to do it-decided on puppets and also decided to call it PUPPET PRESS. Now, the technical difficulties are entirely mine...heads cut off, backwards titles etc. But, the kids did so, so well we really wanted to share our first try at doing this. Next time look for music, credits, fade ins, fade outs!





Next week it's all about dressing it up Halloween style and having a spooky good time! Until then, happy reading!

Back Room Kids Meeting-Thursday October 13, 2011

A lively 45 minute meeting was held with 9 kids aged 9-14. While we snacked on apple juice and granola bars one member shared her visit to Calgary Wordfest and the opportunity to hear authors John Marsden and Cathy Ostlere. We have John Marsden's books and have now requested KARMA.

A request to see if the second  book in TROUBLE TWISTERS by Garth Nix  and Sean Williams was on the way. Not yet, but keeping you posted. In the mean time here is a fun video of the authors reading the prologue! Trouble Twisters has also been requested for the library collection.


Other discussions included the highly recommending the fourth in the Amulet series and a love of the whole series. An agreement that a fantastic book choice for everyone to read is A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS or ORIGAMI YODA or TALES OF A FOURTH GRADE NOTHING. Because we are quite an age range we are also considering having a teen read for the older kids and a middle grade read for the youngers. Two of our teens are interested in facilitating a reading group for the younger set (6-8) as part of our Thursdays, as well. Kids are also interested in devoting one of our meetings per month  to writing and illustrating workshopping and sharing. We have quite a few aspiring writers and illustrators!

Halloween Party on October 27 is a must, complete with spooky stories and creepy cupcake snakes. Plans are in the works.

We wrapped everything up with a trip out to the library to find a book or two to take to a deserted island. It was pointed out that there might not be time to read as concerns would be on how to get off the island. We decided that the rest of us could read while the two who (rightly!) pointed this out could work on getting us off. Seems fair? Choices included:

Eclipse by Stephanine Myer
The Bone Books by Jeff Smith
Deltora Quest by Emily Rodda
The Warriors by Erin Hunter


Next week we will be video taping some book reviews for you! To keep the privacy we will be recording voices, you will only see the back of heads, maybe feet, possibly reviewers in masks...we shall see what we come up with. Until next time...happy reading!

NEXT MEETINGS:

THURS. OCT 20-Video Book Reviews
THURS. OCT 27-Halloween Party-Let's Dress Up!