Here are the booktalks that I've written for various booktalking occasions. Feel free to tweak, reuse, and share.
On Monday, June 3rd, Rayme Clarke’s father ran off with a dental hygienist. On Wednesday, June 5th, Raymie decided that the only way she can get her father back is to win the Little Miss Central Florida Tire competition. So she starts taking baton twirling lessons from Miss Ida Nee. She wants her plan to work, but she might need a little help, possibly from her fellow pageant contestants.
Someday – maybe not today – but someday you’ll have a teacher who just gets you. I did. For me iti was my 8th grade US History teacher, Mr. Omdahl. For Jessica, Alexia, Peter, Luke, Danielle, Anna, and Jeffery, it’s Mr. Terupt. He’s new at Snow Hill School, but he seems to know how to deal with all of the kids and give them just what they need. But an accident on a snowy winter day changes everything – and everyone.
Ada has never been outside in her entire life. Her mother, embarrassed by Ada’s twisted foot, keeps her trapped inside their apartment. When war comes to London, Ada’s mother sends her brother Jamie away to the countryside to keep him safe, and intends to keep Ada locked inside. But Ada has other plans.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get tired of reading about princesses who are just waiting for someone to save them. In Princeless, Adrienne’s parents have locked her up in a tower that is guarded by a dragon in the hopes that a prince will come, rescue, and marry her. But Adrienne is having none of that. When she finds a sword under her bed, she decides that she’s going to save herself and other princesses who don’t really need someone to take care of them.
What do you think of when you think of mummies? Maybe King Tut? Or horror movies? Natalie Jane Prior is going to set you all straight in The Encyclopedia of Preserved People. She covers Egyptian mummies, bog bodies, and even Einstein’s brain.
Do you know what a homonym is? A word that sounds the same as other words but have different meanings – for example, chews and choose. Rose is obsessed with homonyms. She even gave her dog a homonym name: Rain. Rose’s life isn’t always easy – her rules and obsessions sometimes set her apart from other kids – but coming home to Rain always makes things a little better. When a hurricane hits Rose’s town and Rain goes missing, Rose knows that she’s the only one who can find her, even if it means going out alone.
The first thing Nick sees when he opens the attic door is a toaster, which immediately flies at him and gashes his head open. And that’s just the beginning of Nick’s weird experiences with the old junk stored up there. Determined to settle the score, he sells everything he can in a garage sale. It’s only later that he realizes that each item has extraordinary properties and that they were put in the attic by reclusive scientist, Nikola Tesla himself, as part of an elaborate scheme. Nick desperately tries to hunt down all of the things he sold, but there’s someone else looking for them too. The Accelerati!
How long do you think you could make it out in the wilderness alone? A day? Two? Reality TV star Derek Badger thinks that his tv show Expedition Survival! Has prepared him for everything, but he’s about to get a reality check – Florida-style. Lost in the Everglades, this pseudo-survivalist takes on gaters, snakes, and bats that bite. His only hope is Wahoo and his alligator-wrangling dad Mickey.
Custodial Wisdom: Never use a metal ladder in an electrical storm. Bring an extra garbage can to the cafeteria on Turkey Drummettes day. Fix things before they get too big for fixing. Mattie Breen has always been the new girl. She doesn’t know if she can bring herself to make new friends this year, so she convinces her Uncle Potluck to take her on as a custodial apprentice. That way, she can work with him at lunch and recess instead of having to be with all of the other fifth-graders. What she doesn’t plan on is Quincy Sweet popping up all of the time and Uncle Potluck’s bad luck.
Catherine is a pretty typical girl. Her mother and father are always getting on about her for doing her chores. Her older brother keeps giving her advice she doesn’t want. And she writes down the more exciting parts of her life in a diary. Did I mention that she lives in the year 1290 in England? Her chores include hemming sheets, spinning wool, and making soap. Her brother is a monk and her dad is trying to marry her off to the richest suitor he can find. Lucky for us readers, Catherine, called Birdy, is full of tricks to keep from having to spend the rest of her life with an ugly old man.
12 year old Ben Ripley has just been given the most important mission of his twelve year old life: survive spy training, find the devious agent who has infiltrated the CIA Academy for Espionage, and try not to die.
Dear Judge Henry, my dad’s in prison for something he didn’t do, thanks to a judge like you. Me and my sometimes friend Graham thought we could bust him out and escape to Canada where we would live in a cabin, learn to hunt, and make our own flour. It was a fail-safe plan. Well, a lot went wrong. In fact, everything that could go wrong, went horribly, horribly wrong. There was a thunderstorm, a stolen mini-pony, a falling refrigerator, a stinky dog named Fred, and a pair of very heavy wire cutters. You told me to write a letter thinking about what I’ve done, but it wasn’t my fault. It was Grahams! Why do you think we called it the Graham Cracker Plot!
Where would you turn if you decided you wanted to become popular? To teen movies? To popular friends? To a 1950s guide to teenage popularity? No? That’s what Maya did. She picked up Betty Cornell’s Teenage Popularity Guide and decided to give Betty’s advice a whirl for a year and see if it would take her from the bottom of the social ladder all the way to the top.
Oscar disappears from his Barcelona boarding school for seven days and seven nights. No one knew his whereabouts. In fact, he was presumed dead. When he is found by police on the eighth day, he has only a one word explanation: “Marina.”
Shy's summer job involves being on a cruise ship for four different eight day voyages. Trust me, it sounds much more glamorous than it really is. Shy hands out towels and water bottles to rich cruise passengers. He's making good money and the work is not too hard, but one night everything changes. He tries to prevent a passenger from jumping over the side of the ship, but fails. That night starts to haunt his dreams and life on the ship doesn't improve much, especially since he knows that someone is following him.
Have you heard of the boy in the bubble? The boy who was allergic to everything, so allergic that he couldn’t even live outside; he had to live in a bubble where his air was filtered and he couldn’t touch anyone or anything. Rachel has SCID - severe combined immunodeficiency - which renders her defenseless against germs. As such, she's lived in her home her entire life, breathing filtered air, seeing only her mother and her nurse, and watching the world go by through her window. Her life starts to change, however, when a new family moves in next door. As Rachel watches them out her window, she becomes increasingly curious about Olly. He notices her watching and they start up an online friendship. Even though Rachel knows Olly’s secrets from spying on his family, she isn’t sure if she wants to tell him her secret.
When Malcolm and Maud Angel are murdered, the only suspects are their children, Tandy Angel and her brothers. Tandy is a whip-smart prodigy and she’s got secrets, some of which even she doesn’t understand. But she couldn’t have killed her own parents could she? You tell me. Does this girl look like a murderer to you?
Any gamers out there? This one’s for you. Wei-Dong lives in L.A. and lives for playing MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role playing games) like World of Warcraft or SkyRim. He’s picked up a bunch of friends from China to go on raids with him, but what Wei-Dong doesn’t know is that his friends are actually “gold farmers,” playing the game as a job, amassing game wealth that can be sold to Western players at a mark-up. When he finds out how his friends are being exploited, he knows he has to push back. He teams up with his friends and start planning a rebellion, one the likes of which no one has seen before. What starts as an in game revolution turns into a real life protest that can have deadly consequences for all involved.
There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve. Either you are his true love, or you killed him. For Blue Sargent, that could be one in the same. As long as Blue can remember, she has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. But the boy she sees on the Corpse Road on St. Mark’s Eve isn’t anyone she knows. How can she be both his true love and his murderer?
There's something fishy in Tupelo Landing (and it ain't the swamp!). When Mr. Jesse turns up murdered, Mo LaBeau and her trusty sidekick, Dale Ernhardt Johnson III, are on the case (along with a real detective, not that Mo will let that slow her down.). The investigation is going along swimmingly until Mo's beloved guardians, Miss Lana, and the Colonel, are kidnapped. Lucky for Mo, Tupelo Landing has her back!
This contains all my library adventures in my teeny tiny library in Northern Minnesota. I will feature programming, storytime plans, book reviews, and other musings on stuff that I find interesting. Thanks for visiting!
