Book Celebrations: Middle School Novels
- 20 hours ago
- 3 min read
Who says reading together or celebrating what we've read needs to end in elementary school? I would say my older children look forward to these book celebrations even more now, then they did when they were younger. The discussions alone are so rich and meaningful. Comparing novels with their movies (or plays) is such a fun experience. While we have celebrated several novels. There are two favorites, which come to mind.
The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Reading this book is a like a middle school rite of passage in my opinion. I have never met a middle schooler who dislikes it and the movie, well it is mesmerizing. This book also has a lot of food mentioned throughout, so it was pretty easy to come up with the menu. I bought the graphics on Etsy!
The sugar top caked is a food mentioned in the book on more than one occasion. I just bought a bundt cake because momma was short on time (remember - from scratch is only better if you have fun doing it). I printed a wardrobe and dug through our toy bin to add a lion and perfection!
Fish was one of the main foods, as the beavers caught it but we opted for Trader Joe's fish sticks (a favorite food here) and then made some turkey and cheese sandwiches, to represent the sandwiches Mrs. Beaver made.
Turkish Delight was mentioned about one million times in this book. Okay, I am exaggerating but my middle schooler couldn't wait to try it. I had a very hard time finding it where I live, but World Market had some in it's store. Buzz kill: my kiddo didn't like it. Still fun though!
Last but not least, a hot cocoa bar, as they consume cocoa in the book. I mean it is a book that is primarily taking place in winter!
Another favorite was The Adventures of Robin Hood. In terms of movies, you have several choices. We opted for an old school version of the movie but there is a cartoon Disney version (we also watched this), and of course Men and Tights. That was hilarious. We also watched Prince of Thieves. We only used themed food once, but it was literally night after night of movies and comparisons to the tales we read. The discussions were on point and it definitely created a core memory for our entire family.
We started our meal with Pepsi to represent the finest ale, as we were clearly not going to serve ale. Root beer would have also been a great choice! We boiled corn on the cob to represent a vegetable from Marian's garden and used paper medieval looking plates (thanks to Amazon). I also snagged a photography background from Amazon.
On the backdrop I created a sign for Sherwood Forest, which is where much of the tale took place. We made fruit kabobs and put paper arrows on the ends and used Bugle chips for well, bugles.
We, of course, needed some protein, so we thought about all the meat that was cooked and one character who was quite skilled: Gilbert-of-the-White-Hand. We roasted pork for this. Have you ever seen a cudgel? Well, it is a short, fatter stick used as a weapon. Almost like a baseball bat. We figured a loaf of bread was a fairly accurate representation.
As you can tell, we had a lot of fun with this one! Many more middle school books are under our belt and still yet to come, so stay tuned when I have two minutes to spare and I will write something up.
Happy reading! Jenna
Want to see other book celebrations? Visit the saved highlight on my IG!
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