January Meeting: Canva Book Covers

We had another lively meeting this month discussing When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. Most Bookshoppers seemed to have enjoyed the book, especially the twist about Marcus and the Laughing Man. While we ate pizza and talked about time travel and if we would have been brave enough to do what Marcus had done, I set up a quick version of The $20,000 Pyramid, which is the game show that Miranda's mother is a contestant on near the end of the book. The group split up in pairs and took turns being the celebrity (giving clues for their partners to guess words and categories). It was a LOT harder than it seemed. 

I was impressed to hear that most of the Bookshop members successfully avoided seeing the cover while reading the book and were surprised by it when I unwrapped one of the books to show them the original cover. A new cover was designed for the paperback edition, but it doesn't seem like that much of an improvement to me. Most of them agreed that they probably wouldn't have picked the book up judging by the hardcover cover (both covers shown below).

Hardcover edition

Paperback edition

                                 















A few people mentioned that they had envisioned a person on the cover, or a letter, or a photograph of a city scene, and this was their chance to create that awesome new cover! We used Canva to design our own book covers; check them out below.

Front cover

Back cover

Front cover

Back cover

Front cover

Back cover

I would definitely be intrigued enough to pick up books with those covers!

Our next meeting will be Monday, February 26th. We will be discussing What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe. This is an awesome book to browse through since it's organized by absurd hypothetical questions interspersed with hilarious cartoon depictions of those questions being tested out. We will be drawing cartoons depicting our own absurd questions, both by hand and using the online tool Storyboard That. See you next month!

December Meeting: Sculptris

On Monday, we ate lots of pizza, drew some funny (real and imagined) scenes from The Iron Trial by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare, and then, using a very cool, free, 3D modeling program called Sculptris, pretended we were students at the Magisterium with magical elemental abilities. It's hard to capture the program by just looking at the finished two-dimensional designs, but Sculptris basically provides you with a lump of virtual clay (you can start with either a sphere or a plane) and then you can manipulate it in a variety of ways. It definitely requires some patience and time as you play around with the different buttons and get used to the shortcut keys, and it would be even more fun if you used it on a tablet or a computer with touchscreen capabilities because then you could pull and push as if you're really sculpting clay, but the Bookshoppers took to the program surprisingly quickly and made some awesome designs. Enjoy some pictures and videos of the process as well as the finished designs below!

             

BirdyBird by Amy

Mad Cat by Amy

Bird by Avery

Dog by Avery

Untitled by Carson

Untitled by Chris

Head of Extreme Untimely Death by Gabriel

Medusa by Gabriel

Untitled by Isaac 

Untitled by Isaac

Untitled by Julia

Untitled by Arsalan

Our next meeting will be on Monday, January 29th. We will be discussing When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead and designing new book covers with Canva. The book club books I distributed on Monday are covered with brown paper in the hopes that Bookshoppers won't be influenced in their designs by the current cover. If you do return the book before the meeting, please remove the brown paper before returning it so as not to confuse any other library staff. But don't peek at the cover!

November Meeting: Virtual Reality!

Everyone showed up for the meeting this past Monday super excited to try out the library's new HTC Vive virtual reality system. But we did manage to eat pizza and talk about Want, by Cindy Pon, a little bit beforehand. Even though we felt guilty since Jin Corp turned out to be evil, most of us thought the protective suits sounded really cool. Personally, I wanted the flying motorcycle that Jason got to zoom around in. We were divided about how realistic we thought the portrayal of the future was; all of that pollution and the huge divide between the haves and have-nots didn't sound fun. But we did have fun watching Sam, our VR guru from IT, use VR Google Earth to fly around present-day Taipei in Taiwan, which is where the book takes place. The surrounding mountains were beautiful, and we even got down to street view to check out some land-bound mopeds and the super tall Taipei 101 skyscraper building.

After Sam gave a quick safety talk, I demonstrated Longbow, one of the play options in The Lab, the VR game each Bookshopper would get a chance to try. I'd played it once before so didn't completely embarrass myself as I used a bow and arrow to defend a medieval castle from invaders - phew!

Each person was able to play around in one of the The Lab's minigames for four minutes in order to give everyone equal playing time. Most people chose to play Longbow; it really does feel like you're shooting an arrow, and if you engage in the rapid fire technique that Isaac advocated for, it's actually a pretty good workout too.

A couple Bookshop members wanted to explore other aspects of The Lab. Avery visited Vesper Peak in the Washington Cascades where she bonded with a robot dog and threw it lots of sticks.

A few of the Bookshoppers also visited a lava tube where they got to blow up a bunch of colorful balloons that floated around the cavern. Hima chose to zoom around the solar system, throwing planets around and juggling Jupiter.

I think we all wanted to keep playing around when Bookshop ended, so I will do my best to schedule another VR evening before our last meeting of the year.

Our next meeting will be on Monday, December 18th, in THREE weeks instead of four, due to the Christmas holiday so get reading! We will be discussing The Iron Trial by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare and playing with elements, as the magicians do in the book, using Sculptris, a free 3D modeling program.

October Meeting: Wits & Wagers and Alive Shoes

We had a lively meeting this week as we got caught up on exciting happenings and talked about upcoming Halloween plans. We did have a brief discussion about Ghost by Jason Reynolds. Most Bookshoppers enjoyed the book, although no one seemed to have been inspired to go out and join a track team... Those practices sounded rough!

Taking our cue from Ghost's obsession with World Records, we played an adaptation of Wits & Wagers, in which teams of two tried to guess the world records for a bunch of bizarre subjects, such as the most marshmallows eaten in one minute (25), the largest group of people dressed as ghosts at the same time in the same place (263), the tallest stack of books balanced on one's head (62), and the cost of the most expensive shoes ever sold ($104, 765). Suffice it to say that most of our guesses were WAY off.

After the game, it was time to put on our designer hats and create our dream shoes. We used a really cool free website called AliveShoes that actually does allow you to purchase the shoes you design...for a hefty price. We were just doing it for fun, but our Bookshop group has serious talent and style! I saw a bunch of designs that I would love to wear, and I bet that Ghost would love them too, although he might not want to run the 100-meter dash in them... Check out our awesome shoe (and box) designs below!

AMY'S SHOES

Luna

Silver Fox

Panda

ARSALAN'S SHOES

Thunderstorm

AVERY'S SHOES

Underwater

Storm 

Actors

CARSON'S SHOES

Shoezzzz 

CHRISTOPHER'S SHOES

The Shoes

 EMILY'S SHOES

Flash

Speed Demon 

GABRIEL'S SHOES

Poop Butt

 HIMA'S SHOES

Meow

Thunder

Smooth Slide

ISAAC'S SHOES

Maffucci's

JULIA'S SHOES

Julia

STEFAN'S SHOES

Memes

Our next meeting will be Monday, November 27th, which is the Monday after Thanksgiving. We will be reading Want by Cindy Pon and exploring real-life science fiction with the library's new Virtual Reality technology!

September Meeting: Fact vs. Fiction

Bookshop is back! A big bookish welcome to our six returning members and our four new members! I'm super excited to read and discuss and create with you this year.

Since we didn't read a book prior to our first meeting, we spent much of the meeting chatting, eating, and getting (re)acquainted. To do so, we played Two Truths and A Lie where everyone said three things about themselves and the group could ask two questions before guessing which one wasn't true. Even though some members of the group have known each other for a long time, we all learned some pretty cool things (our "facts" are below with the lies italicized).

AMY
1. I love Taylor Swift.
2. I've never been to the Grand Canyon.
3. I like hugging people to death.

ARSALAN
1. I'm allergic to marshmallows.
2. I'm allergic to peanut butter.
3. My mom is allergic to cats.

AVERY
1. I've been in the Nutcracker for 4 years; this will be my 5th year.
2. I've been to Greece.
3. My hamster is semi-famous.

CARSON
1. I went to see the total eclipse this summer.
2. I went to LA this summer.
3. I drank a cactus in the Grand Canyon.

CHRIS
1. I have a cool nickname.
2. Delaware is my favorite state.
3. I've been to Mexico City.

EMILY
1. I played varsity basketball in college.
2. I've written three Curious George books.
3. I taught English in France for a year.

GABRIEL
1. My family has two summer houses.
2. I live on Flint Street.
3. I eat tostadas 5 out of 7 days a week.

HIMA
1. I have two dogs.
2. My sister is 16.
3. I've been to India.

ISAAC
1. I have blue eyes.
2. I'm British.
3. I like skateboarding.

JULIA
1. I have a dog.
2. I'm from China.
3. My favorite ice cream flavor is vanilla.

STEFAN
1. I like peanuts.
2. I don't like music.
3. I like pistachios.

After that little icebreaker, we broke into groups of two to play Snap Judgment, which went along with our theme of discerning fact from fiction. I read out a statement and each pair had 3 minutes to use the internet to try to verify it. Some of the statements were easier than others, and we talked about which news sites online are credible (i.e. https://newsela.com/) and which aren't (i.e. http://www.theonion.com/).

All in all, a fun, high-energy first meeting of the year! Our next meeting will be Monday, October 30, from 5:30-7:00pm. We are reading Ghost by Jason Reynolds, a book about a middle school boy who's running out of chances until he joins an elite track team and discovers that maybe he can turn his life around by running toward something instead of always running away. During our meeting, we will be using a really cool online website to design our own track shoes. See you next month!

June Meeting: Food Art

For our last meeting of the school year, we made book-inspired food art depicting scenes from one of the two book choices for this month, Shooting Kabul by N. H. Senzai and Roller Girl by Victoria Jamieson. Five of the six attendees chose to read Shooting Kabul and one chose to read Roller Girl so before we started our food activity, we shared brief summaries of each book, had a quick discussion about each, and watched a few clips of roller derby action since none of us could quite picture what a roller derby bout looked like.

After that, we got right to the fun stuff, using graham crackers, mini marshmallows, pretzel sticks, vanilla frosting, chocolate frosting, sprinkles, and M&Ms to create scenes from the books. Pictures of the process and the finished products are below.

The Process

Shooting Kabul Food Art

Mantu, Fadi's sister's favorite food

 The truck pulling away without Mariam

 Fadi's camera

Roller Girl Food Art

Roller derby rink #1

Roller derby rink #2

Roller derby rink #3

Bookshop will be taking a hiatus in July and August, but we'll be back in the fall! Don't forget to visit the us, reading blog over the summer to be a part of the Cambridge upper school reading community. You'll be entered to win awesome prizes every time you write a review of the great books you're reading!