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June 18, 2009
This Year's Cool Stuff Bag
Every year when I go out and do my end-of-the-year school visits, I put together a Cool Stuff Bag to bring with me. The Cool Stuff Bag MUST be filled with things that will cause the kids to react strongly and immediately as soon as I take them out of the bag. This year's bag, put together in large part by my coworker Amy (thanks, Amy!), was extraordinarily successful, so I thought I'd share the contents with all of you.
Books:
*The Adventures of Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey (No matter what group of children you hold this book in front of, most of them will cheer.)
*Babymouse: The Musical by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm (Kids: "I love Babymouse!" Me: "Me, too!")
*Beyond the Grave (The 39 Clues series, book 4) by Tie-In Writer Extraordinaire Jude Watson (who, I like to inform the kids, IS A GIRL)
*Camilla Gryski's Favorite String Games by Camilla Gryski, illustrated by Tom Sankey (This will be more impressive if you can demo some string tricks, which I can.)
*Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
*Garfield Chews the Fat by Jim Davis
*My Friend is Sad (An Elephant and Piggie Book) by Mo Willems
*Pirates by John Matthews (My booktalk: "I bought this book for the library because of the way this skull has a jewel eye on the cover." Second grader: "That's AWESOME!" You can always count on the second graders.)
*Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary by David West Reynolds
*Twilight (Warriors: The New Prophesy series, book 5) by Erin Hunter
*You Must Be Joking, Two! by Paul Brewer
*You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?!" by Jonah Winter and Andre Carrilho (Thank you to the designer who made this cover holographic. The kids were all like, "Woah! Cool!")
DVD:
*The Teacher from the Black Lagoon... and More Slightly Scary Stories (Scholastic Video Collection)
*Lightning and Other Forces of Nature (Popular Mechanics for Kids series)
Book on CD:
*Coraline by Neil Gaiman (Me: "Audiobooks are great if you're taking a car or plane trip, and check out the illustrations on these CDs.")
Playaway:
*Revenge of the Living Dummy (Goosebumps HorrorLand series) (The kids were really taken with the Playaway format. I was surprised, and I'm going to be interested to see if they come in looking for them now.)
Music CDs:
*No! by They Might Be Giants
*Disney High School Musical: The Concert (Of course, some of the kids are SO OVER HSM and boo while other kids cheer, but I always enjoy that kind of thing.)
Videogames:
*Smarty Pants (Wii)
*Thrillville (PS2)
Posted by adrienne at June 18, 2009 08:38 AM
Comments
Books about Pirates should ALWAYS be obtained for the kids room! Whether or not you have a staff member who has a pirate fixation...yaarrhh!
Posted by: Xandi at June 18, 2009 02:12 PM
Garfield.
Okay, obvs. I'm not ten.
I'm thrilled that somewhere in America, children are already feeling over HSM...
Posted by: tanita at June 18, 2009 04:39 PM
Xandi, Buying pirate books is pretty much a habit now. I think you'd have a heart attack of love if you saw this particular one. The combination of the skull-and-crossbones and bling is pretty unbeatable.
Tanita, More than HSM, I'm glad to be finally seeing the signs of Hannah Montana's star fading. I used to not mind her, but then she got annoying when she was omnipresent.
It's funny to me that kids today love Garfield pretty much the same way I did when I was small, but what makes me really happy is how much they still love Calvin and Hobbes. I still love reading C&H myself.
Posted by: adrienne at June 18, 2009 08:56 PM
Dude, I thought you meant that each kid got one of these bags, and I was deeply impressed.
Still am, though. Way to rock it, Amy.
Posted by: Jules at June 18, 2009 10:14 PM
As a fellow TMBG fan, I would like to point out another great kids' album: "Snack Time" by Barenaked Ladies. We got it and "No" at the same time... I'm shocked and a little sad to say that I love "Snack Time" and only like "No." But with songs like "Crazy ABCs" ("P is for pterodactyl, pneumonic and pneumonia"), it's great for my kids *and* me.
Posted by: Shan at June 18, 2009 10:35 PM
Jules, If I could manage a giveaway bag like that, I really *would* be an impressive librarian.
Shan, We have that one here at the library, but I haven't gotten to listen to it yet. Have you heard Here Come the 123s"? That's the TMBG kids' album I really love.
Posted by: adrienne at June 19, 2009 05:38 PM
I took "My Friend is Sad" on my many class visits this past week, and a couple of classes would not rest until I read it out loud to them. So much fun!
Posted by: Laura at June 20, 2009 05:31 PM
You've made some excellent selections!
Posted by: Little Willow at June 20, 2009 08:51 PM
Laura, I just love Elephant and Piggie.
Little Willow, Thanks!
Posted by: adrienne at June 21, 2009 12:50 AM
Oh, this is a lovely idea. The rest of us might want to come up with our ideal Cool Stuff Bags and post the contents on our blogs. Just a thought. I'm thinking!
Posted by: Saints and Spinners at June 22, 2009 04:25 PM
That is a good idea! If I was one of those organized bloggers, I would get people to do that next April, too, so as to give everyone good ideas for their school visits when it would actually be useful. I'd be interested to see what everyone would put in their bag even so, though.
Posted by: adrienne at June 22, 2009 10:34 PM