Turn down the lights and astound your audience with tales of adventures, hauntings, and astounding plot twists! Best of all, no special screen needed…it’s parchment paper from your home pantry.
We read Gilbert the Ghost by Guido Van Genechten (Clavis, 2014). Gilbert is not like the other ghosts at Ghost School. For starters, he was born blush, not ghostly white. And while other ghosts are shouting “Booooo!” Gilbert can only say “Ba…ba…bahoo!” For this, he is banished to the Abandoned Tower. But it’s not quite abandoned, and thus begins Gilbert’s wonderful friendship with Meow the cat. The roommates claim the tower for their own, and make it into the coziest little haunt you’ve ever seen. Soon, there are many visitors, but only one ghost who can say “Bahoo!”
You’ll need:
- A rectangle of corrugated cardboard (we used a 10″ x 14″ cake pad)
- A theater banner from the template, printed on 8.5″ x 11″ paper
- Small boxes to prop the theater up
- Parchment paper
- Black poster board
- 3 drinking straws
- 2 LED votive candles
- Scissors and tape for construction
- Markers for decorating
- Box cutter
- Hot glue
To create the front of your theater, cut a window into a piece of corrugated cardboard. Then use markers to decorate the cardboard stage (or use patterned tape and star stickers like we did). Add a banner from the template, and you’re done!
Flip the cardboard over, then tape or hot glue a piece of parchment paper on top of the window. This is your theater screen. Attach a strip of poster board to the bottom of the screen to create a pocket for your scenery to sit in during performances. Finish by hot gluing small boxes to the base to prop your theater up, making sure they are tall enough for two LED lights to stand on either side of the screen.
Now for the entertainment! Cut 3 pieces of scenery and 3 puppets from black poster board, then tape drinking straws to the top of the puppets.
It’s showtime! Fire up those LED votive lights and enjoy!
And while we had some wonderful ghostly tales being told at Ethan’s Pika Theater…
And some intrepid cats on adventures elsewhere in the library…
At Seraphina’s theater, there were some distinct holiday vibes happening!
It’s a special week for hoots and haunts, so we’re delving into the blog archive to deliver our most ghostly posties for your Halloween celebrations!
Moving on to a different house, different haunting, we read Ghosts in the House (Square Fish reprint edition, 2010). After crafting a classic ghost chest, kids had to locate multiple phantoms spirited away in our elaborate
For simpler – but no less spooky – apparitions try this 
And speaking of optical illusions, we dug through Cotsen’s special collections and discovered a really cool book from 1864. Spectropia allows the reader to experience the scientific concept of afterimages. The post contains 
We’ll conclude our Halloween post with a ghostly guppy. We read Goldfish Ghost (Roaring Brook Press, 2017) and crafted this simple paper plate goldfish marionette that of course hangs upside down. It was quite a hit at story time!
