Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 8 Party

Fregley is gawking creepily at your book choices to help me tell you about the Diary of a Wimpy Kid party we recently held at my library for the Book 8 launch. We usually have it closer to the launch date, so we can get the event kit, etc, but I noticed that last year the kids who wanted to put the new book on reserve on that day were already facing a reserve line of 50+.  An early release day about a month ahead of time? PERFECT.

AND, it lets me give all you awesome readers some free stuff to make your upcoming Wimpy Kid party a snap.

Here's how it went down:

1. Cover reveal and new plot line discussion: Okay, so I get it that all us librarians and other bibliophiles await the cover reveal date on book blogs, and so we've known about the Book 8 cover, title, and publisher's marketing plot lines for a minute. But imagine for a second you're the ultimate DOAWK fan and you're 10 so you DON'T know that stuff like the kidlitosphere exists and you just found out in your library newsletter that Greg Heffly is at it again and all you want to know is everything about it but like it's not on the Minecraft website and Googling stuff is a PAIN and and and....

SO I got them amped for it by telling them that I had the cover, BUT FIRST we would talk about a few weird things about Jeff Kinney. Mostly that DOAWK was originally intended for adults, and that each joke takes 4 hours to write. THEN I unveiled the cover image with a grand flourish and there was much fanboying/fangirling and It was Good.

We also talked about what "Hard Luck" means and what would happen if we based all of our decisions on chance, using the example of having chicken fingers or tofu for lunch, but you only like ONE of those (whichever one was up to them). Then I flipped a coin to show that what you want doesn't really matter when it comes to chance. But if you actually made a decision, you could make the choice to have the lunch you want no matter what.

I DON'T HAVE THE CORRECT DIPPING SAUCE FOR THAT.

2. Hard Luck Fortune Reader: This game is available online at http://www.wimpykidclub.co.uk/greg-heffley%E2%80%99s-hard-luck-fortune-reader/. I set up our projector and we all played once together. I had the projector and laptop still set up for the station-based portion of the event, so they could try it themselves.

3. Trivia Game: . I liked the idea of a trivia game, but the questions given had no context and for 7 books I think that's a little much. So, having gotten paid to write questions as recently as last spring, I decided to create my own True/False questions based on Cabin Fever and The Third Wheel, which I had read the weekend prior. I had them put their hand on their head if they thought each was true or on their nose if they thought it was false. The most fun questions were the ones that are true AND false, because they generated a lot of discussion and debate. Here's a link so you can use it too!

4. DOAWK character scavenger hunt: I got the idea for the scavenger hunt game from this site, but the day before my event Anna at Future Librarian Superhero posted a stealth program wherein she she does the exact thing I did.   I guess there's LESS fancy people I could appear to copy ideas from, or apparently share parts of my brain with.
ANYWAY, one important part was definitely using the character hunt to highlight portions of the collection that fans of the books would like. I even gave them an extra Mom Buck if they found a book to check out from one of the sections (one kid even said "She's controlling us with Mom Bucks!")

5. Diary of a __________ Kid: I had them create their own book covers with their own adjectives. I created a page that said "Diary of a _____ Kid" on the top and had a square in the middle so they could draw. A TON of kids chose "Hungry", even though I specifically made this program to not interfere with lunch (3pm on an early release day). (Edit: I realize, nearly a year later, that I was inspired to do this after reading Ingrid at Magpie Librarian's DOAWK party post. Knowing this, I feel remiss not to link to it. Thanks, Ingrid!)

My favorite is all the question marks and the guy who's like "My pizza?"

The last two they were able to do on their own, at their own pace, and as they completed each they got a Mom Buck.

What's your Book 8 party plan?