>The Rocky Horror Shrek Show!

>We celebrated Children’s Book Week with a clever take on the movie Shrek. Inspired by the revival on the television show Glee, we combined the interactive nature of The Rocky Horror Picture Show with one of our favorite movies, Shrek!

What is The Rocky Horror Picture Show?
The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a 1975 British musical comedy film that parodies science fiction and B-movie horror films.

Why The Rocky Horror Shrek Show?
Inspired by an episode of Glee and a love for the original Shrek movie, we thought we could take the interactive part of Rocky Horror and mesh it with Shrek. Despite a small turnout (8 children and three adults) we did have a great afternoon!

We are sharing information with you to create your own Rocky Horror Shrek Show!.
Also, if you have ideas to share, please leave us a comment or e-mail us at lacsd@delcolibraries.org!
The ideas listed below are collected from friends and colleagues.

Please note: the information below assumes that you have previously watched Shrek.

The materials we used to create the experience:
-paper (for airplanes and to make signs.
-gumdrops
-string
-marshmallows (we used Kraft Jumbo Marshmallows)
-shredded paper for confetti

Movie license to show Shrek.

How we interacted with the movie
We left the captions on so that we could read the screen and/ orsing along.

Opening :At true Love’s first kiss we blew a kiss
Sing: All Star
Scare away the Mob: Scream
Donkey flies: Paper airplanes
Sing: All Alone (Donkey)
Who Knows Where Lord Farquaad is: we all screamed “Pick Me! Pick Me!”
When Lord Farquaad is torturing The Gingerbread Man and threatening his buttons: we ate a gum drop button
We all recited the exchange between Farquaad and the Gingerbread Man:

Do you know the Muffin Man?
The Muffin Man?
The Muffin man.
Yes, I know the Muffin Man, who lives on Drury Lane?
She’s married to the Muffin man.
The Muffin Man?
The Muffin Man!

When The magic mirror showed Farquaad his choice of bachelorettes we held up signs to pick bachelorette 1, 2, o r 3

Upon arriving in DuLoc we all sang the welcome sign and took a picture
The fight in DuLoc:

Throw yarn, ribbon (the ale)
Cheer Shrek

Rescuing Fiona: we all screamed when we saw the dragon.

Walking in the woods
Fiona sings with bird: Everyone sings (I think if we do this again I am going to pass out bags to pop when the bird explodes)

When Robin Hood ‘rescues’ Fiona: Subtitles to sing the song

When Shrek, Fiona and Donkey make camp for the night: Marshmallows to eat in lieu of weed rats. (I couldn’t find shoestrings for rat tails!)

At the wedding of Fiona and Farquaad:

Signs that read Applause, Awwww! Aaah! Gasp!
Green hearts (they are ogres!) and we made kissy noises.

At Shrek and Fiona’s wedding we used shredded paper as confetti.
And of course all sang I’m a Believer.

In the future this will definitely be restricted to ages 10 and up. The younger members enjoyed the food but didn’t really care for the interactive part of the performance.

Some of the materials for the movie

Lots of string!

Ms. Margaret helped out

A giant marsh…, uh weed rat!

The players showing off the signs

We have a whole week of events planned! Stop by and join in on the fun!
-r

>All the world’s a stage!

>Tween Book Club met today and we went mad about the Bard!



A Winter’s Tale



Today we FINALLY used the Masterpuppet Theater set that was donated to us by Eric at Quirk Books and we had a blast!

The goal of the day was to perform Shakespeare in Sixty Seconds. Inspired by the BBC’s contest we wanted to act out the plays in a condensed form.
We started with clips of Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth  from The Reduced Shakespeare Company to get a feel of the stage and the actors. Despite some remarks about the language and having trouble with what was being said, there were many chuckles from the group as we watched the performances.

Thou venom rude-growing scut!

Our next activity was a game of snaps using the Shakespeare Insult Kit. By far Thou goatish fat-kidneyed foot-licker was the favorite. This part was so much fun that we carried on a few extra minutes and made up a few of our own. Copies of the insults were made to be given to group members!

We finally used the puppets and performed scenes from The Winter’s Tale (Act 3, scene 3 lines 15-38), 

Macbeth (Act 4, scene 1, lines 1-38) and Hamlet (Act 3, scene 1, lines 55-89).

A discussion of Hamet began and the group wanted to explore that at a future meeting.

We talked about modern takes on Shakespeare’s works and watched a bit of West Side Story. We compared the begining riot with the Sharks and the Jets to the Family fued in Fair Verona.

Here is (an abbreviated) list of plays to help introduce you to the world of Shakespeare.

The Tragedies.

Hamlet

Macbeth

Romeo & Juliet

The Comedies.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The Taming of the Shrew

Much Ado About Nothing

Books available at our meeting:
Adaptations

Romiette and Julio by Sharon Draper

The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet by Erin Dunne

Romeo’s Ex by Lisa Fiedler

Dating Hamlet, Ophelia’s Story by Lisa Fieldler

Something Wicked by Alan Gratz

Something Rotten by Alan Gratz

Wicked Will by Bailey MacDonald

The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt

Graphic Novels

Romeo and Juliet


Twelfth Night

Picture Books

Romeow and Drooliet by Nina Laden

Web Sites

Shakespeare’s insults sound so good!

http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/dryfoo/Funny-pages/shakespeare-insult-kit.html

 http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/Shaker/

Words Shakespeare invented: http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/resources/shakespeare-words.htm

Films

Hamlet:
The Lion King (2001) Let the Devil Wear Black (1999)

The Taming of the Shrew:
 Kiss Me Kate (1948)
10 Things I Hate About You

Macbeth:
Men of Respect (1991)
Scotland, PA (2001)

Romeo and Juliet
West Side Story (1961)
Romeo Must Die (2000)

>The Marshmallow Challenge

>Today during a special Prove It! we challenged our young patrons to build a structure using a marshmallow, dry spaghetti, 3 feet of tape and 3 feet of string in 18 minutes. What a creative group! After thinking about it the structures varied from thick bases to carefully measured bases. .
Afterwards we enjoyed (unused) leftover marshmallows.
Thank you to all of the children who participated!

Here are some pictures from the event

>NaNoWriMo

>What?

What in the world is NaNoWriMo you may ask?

National Novel Writing Month happens every November!
It’s a FUN writing event where the challenge is to write an entire novel in just 30 days. That means participants begin writing November 1 and must finish by midnight, November 30. For our first Novel-a-long, we are setting the pace at WHATEVER you feel comfortable with.

The thing that matters most in NaNoWriMo is output. Our high-velocity approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: you will be writing a lot of strange stuff, and some of it will be just plain bad. But that’s a good thing! For 30 days, you get to lock that inner editor in the basement, let your imagination take over, and just create!

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants of all ages are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel.

To read more about NaNoWriMo, check out this website about NaNoWriMo’s Young Writer’s program here.

Good Luck and happy writing!
-r

>Comic Book Day!

>

Through a generous donation by the Friends of the Lansdowne Public Library we were excited to present a game day and comic book swap. Participants were invited to bring in their old books, get a new one and make one of their own in anticipation of Free Comic Book day, May 1st.

We had video games set up and children could play during the swap or create a book of their own from a template.

Books swapped were purchased from Cool Stuff Comics and every child was given a free book from a donation by the Delaware County Library System.

Here are pictures from the event.

A sample of the comics to be swapped

Picking out comics

Make your own comics

Competing in Just Dance

>It’s all Greek to me!

>Our book club formerly known as Battle of the Books has been changed to TBC: ‘Tween Book Club. The change came when the ‘tweens that frequent the library were interested in creating something that was a cross between our Book Bunch Group and our teen writers group. We met a few weeks ago ti discuss options and I borrowed ideas from a presentation from by The Children’s Library and Mt Lebanon Public Library. The new group will focus on books and related crafts and activities for the older adolescent.

Our first meet up was designed to share some of the excitement and interest generated by the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. We went back in time to ancient Greece.
Activities that we did:
Write your name using Greek Letters.
Sample food inspired by traditional Greek eating habits. For our experience we had bread (the Ancient Greeks had lost of wheat products), honey (they didn’t use sugar but would use honey to sweeten their food), grape juice (to substitute for wine) and olives.
Discuss our favorite Gods and Goddesses.
Trivia about monsters.
Make a toga out of Toilet paper.
Decorate Greek vases.

Join us next month for Crime Capers as we solve a mystery in the library!
-r

Enjoy some pictures from the event!