Tag Archives: creative

It’s a Proper Pig Palooza

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You’re invited to the party of the century, complete with music, dancing, costumes, aaaaaand cake! There’s just one rule…you absolutely HAVE to be a pig to attend!

We read Pig Town Party by Lian Cho (Harper, 2024). When an exclusive “Pig Town Party” invitation arrives in the wrong mailbox, the little girl doesn’t hesitate. Despite not being a pig, and not being invited, she navigates her way to Pig Town and enthusiastically joins in the festivities. Because it’s a costume party, no one questions her until the REAL pig the invite was intended for shows up. And that pig is very, very, miffed. Chaos ensues, a chase, and a big surprise in the end for the party crasher! This hilarious book was recommended by a story time kid, and we absolutely loved it!

You’ll need:

  • 1 large oatmeal container
  • Pink construction paper
  • 1 jumbo pom pom
  • 1 pair of wiggles eyes
  • Various art supplies for costumes
  • Scissors, tape, and glue for construction
  • Markers for decorating
  • Hot glue

We begin with our standard oatmeal container piggy with wiggle eyes, a jumbo pom pom nose, and self-adhesive foam nostrils:

Then, our story time kids costumed their pigs with art supplies galore! Take a look…

Once the costumes were complete, there was music, dancing, and everyone got to take home a squishy little cake key chain! It was a party to remember!

Stuart Visits: Princeton Public Library!

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Welcome to the newest feature of Pop Goes the Page…Stuart Visits!

Katie and I were on a internet quest (specifically, we were looking for a remote control robot cat that never quite materialized for our Great Catsby event). Suddenly, we stumbled across this fantastic little roadster driven by none other than Stuart Little!

As you can see, the car is super cute, zippy, and easy to operate. As we watched Stuart motor around Cotsen, we had an epiphany. Why not mount a camera on the back of the car, and Stuart can visit various locations and offer his unique mouse perspective on them?

For his inaugural voyage, we reached out to our Youth Services friends at the Princeton Public Library who responded with total enthusiasm. They just launched their “Unearth A Story” summer reading program…see if you can spot some staff picks along Stuart’s route!

 

Where will Stuart visit next? To be continued…

Strawberry for the Win!

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It’s a grand day for a dash when Dog decides to challenge Strawberry to the greatest race of all time! There’s plenty of action! Drama! Excitement! But…is Strawberry even aware of any of this?

We read Dog vs. Strawberry, written by Nelly Buchet, and illustrated by Andrea Zuill (Random House Studio, 2024). When Dog’s owner innocently offers her a strawberry, Dog takes it as an open challenge for a race. Dog sprints, jumps, leaps, chases her tail, and even takes a power nap. But the stoic (and completely unaware) Strawberry always seems to have the advantage. Narrated in a NASCAR commenter’s voice, this book is hilarious, with escalating laughs as our story time kids realized that the race was very one-sided indeed. Highly recommended!

The project was relatively simple. We crafted a box dog with poster board ears, tail, and a paper cup nose. We paired it with a red plastic ball pit ball made to look like a strawberry. Then we had some races!

The thing that really elevated the project was the dog’s super boop-able black foam nose. It’s a repurposed costume clown nose, securely hot glued to the paper cup. The foam nose made pushing and bumping the strawberry extra fun.

First, we raced down tables with the kids boop-ing the strawberry to the finish line. But then things segued into a form of soccer, where kids tried to boop the strawberry past me into a “goal.” Very appropriate for World Cup time! We had a blast!