Booktalk: Unfortunate Children Who Find Weird Stuff In Their Walls!

I'm pretty comfortable doing storytimes at this point, but finding themes and formats to engage older elementary and early middle schoolers can be tough for me. UCWFWSITW (as I shall henceforth abbreviate this booktalk) is my fallback, as it's been a show-stealer every time and the kids always check out a chunk of the books I display. It's a great twist on smart kidlit because it marries realistic fiction themes to fantastical settings.

Booktalk/Read-Aloud: Unfortunate Children Who Find Weird Stuff Living In Their Walls! (or, Extraordinary Worlds in Ordinary Places)

Age group: 4th-6th grade (reasonably mature 3rd graders can also handle it)

Background/Introduction: Everyone knows that ordinary-looking wardrobes are connected to magical lands, and unassuming train platforms can lead to adventure in other worlds. But what else is hidden in the everyday objects around you? The books I'm going to tell you about today all feature quirky characters who fall on hard times - usually orphans or outcasts - and end up living in strange houses that lead to other worlds. You'd be amazed what you can find in your walls, for instance. Haven't you always wondered if that scratching you hear at night is a mouse... or a boggart?! (Here I usually make a scritching sound on a book or a table for the mouse, then startle them with the boggart bit. Unless they're 5th and 6th graders; then I cop to a certain amount of sarcasm.)

Display/Booktalk: I set up a table with selections from the following series. I spend maybe 30 seconds on each series, describing the plot briefly and leaving them with a "dangling carrot." (Here plot summaries are included, courtesy of Novelist, for my colleagues.)

• Spiderwick Chronicles by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black - This popular series features siblings who move into an eerie old house and find a field guide that reveals their home is infested with creatures - some of whom are out for evil. It was recently made into a movie so it is a natural connection point with kids. Five books in the series, plus numerous spinoffs, including an eye-grabbingly illustrated "field guide."
  
• Green Knowe Chronicles by L.M. Boston - Tolly comes to live with his great-grandmother in an ancient house and becomes friends with three children who lived there in the seventeenth century. As the series progresses, they find various magical artifacts in the house. Six volumes in this series.
  
• Pure Dead Magic series by Debi Gliori - When their father is kidnapped and danger looms, the Strega-Borgia children, their mysterious new nanny, and a giant tarantula use magic and trips through the Internet to bring peace to their Scottish castle. Six books of Lemony Snicket-esque insanity.
  
• Ulysses Moore series by Pierdomenico Baccalario - After moving from London to an old mansion on the English coast, eleven-year-old twins discover that their new home has twisting tunnels, strange artifacts from around the world, and a mysterious, locked door. This series currently has four volumes.
  
• Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins - A boy sets off to rescue his baby sister from the Underland, inhabited by rats, spiders and cockroaches, which is under his New York City apartment via an air duct. Five books in this series so far.
  
• Orphan stories by Barbara Brooks Wallace - Though not exactly a series, these books (Ghosts in the Gallery, Peppermints in the Parlor, etc.) are parodies of the "orphans in strange houses stumbling upon creepy creatures and ghosts" genre.
  
• The House with a Clock in Its Walls by John Bellairs - A boy goes to live with his magician uncle in a mansion that has a clock hidden in the walls which is ticking off the minutes until doomsday. Bellairs has written many other books of this type.
  

I also throw the following on the table because their style or content relates them somewhat (mostly I just want every kid to have the opportunity to check something out!):

• 100 Cupboards by N.D. Wilson
• Horns and Wrinkles by Joseph Helgerson and Nicoletta Ceccoli
• The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
  
• Series of Unfortunate Events books by Lemony Snicket
• The Castle in the Attic by Elizabeth Winthrop
  
• The Game of Sunken Places by M.T. Anderson

Read-aloud: After I zip through the booktalks, I read aloud a fantastic picture book for older kids, Neil Gaiman's Wolves in the Walls. This book is like a graphic novel in picture book format, with really interesting collage-style illustrations by Gaiman's usual collaborator Dave McKean. Since the book is funny as well as creepy, it sucks the kids right in. Even the most stubborn pouters end up joining in on the great refrain, "If the wolves come out of the walls... it's all over!" I sometimes crinkle tissue paper in my hand to imitate the rustling sound of the wolves.

For older classes, I sometimes forgo Wolves in the Walls in favor of reading aloud from Neil Gaiman's Coraline, about a girl who finds a mysterious door in her house that crosses into another dimension, where she meets evil versions of her mom and dad. This book is genuinely spooky - gives me shivers every time. I got an ARC of the graphic novel version of Coraline at ALA Midwinter and passed it around last time I did this booktalk; after I was done, the boys huddled around it for almost 15 minutes, pointing out the grossest illustrations. Now that's success!

Additional uses: If you didn't want to do this as a booktalk/read-aloud, it works just as well as a display. You could use a slogan like, "What's in YOUR walls?" and make a working paper doorway with a creepy creature hiding behind it.