Sturdy for Common Things

No Such Thing

Halloween is my *favorite* holiday of the year, which means of all the holidays I have soft spot in my heart for Halloween picture books. This year, I fell hard for No Such Thing, by first time picture book author, Ella Bailey. 

As Halloween nears, young Georgia notices bizarre happenings around her house. A vase falls out of nowhere. (Must be the cat.) Her socks go missing. (Must be mice.) Her crayons go missing and pictures appear on the walls. (Must be little brother.) Georgia always finds some type of logical deduction to explain these occurrence, determined there are no such things as ghosts.

A nice element of surprise to this book is that until the very end, there are ghosts hidden on almost every page. If you didn’t happen to notice, at the end the reader is prompted to go back and search for them. Frequently, I have children that come to the library that are easily scared. With it’s playful, smiley ghosts, No Such Thing is a great Halloween pick for those who tend to become uncomfortable or frightened by ghoulish holiday staples.

Since sharing this book with my 4-year-old daughter, she has been ghost crazy and is frequently found creating her own not-so-spooky renditions at her art table:

She was having such a good time making her own ghosts, that I thought we’d try going 3-D and construct friendly cheese cloth ghosts. We kinda-sorta followed this tutorial from Martha and once dry, cut the eyes and mouth out of felt and adhered using fabric glue.

For Spontaneous Storytime, an initiative to conduct random storytimes on the fly in the library, I have been playing around with the idea of reading a featured book of the day several times to kids throughout my shift and having an extension activity available to explore after the reading. So, I brought in a few of the cheese cloth ghosts L and I made and hid them behind displayed books. After reading No Such Thing, the kids went on a ghost hunt in the library! The ghosts decided they enjoy the library so much that they’re going to hide out and cause mischief until Halloween…

 

 

Recently, I found out that the library has a REAL resident ghost named Eugene. Hope he enjoys his new buddies in the Kids Room!

 

For more fun Halloween activities in the library, check out: 

Hafuboti’s Mostest with the Ghostests and Book Graveyard.

These adorable book character pumpkin contests here, here, and here.

 

A couple other easy-peasy ghost crafts that look like all the fun:

Coffee filter ghosts via Blog Me Mom

Cotton Ball Ghost Craft via Happy Hooligans

 

Source of Book Reviewed: The wonderful folks at Flying Eye Books!