Hannah's Bookmobile Christmas

Hannah's Bookmobile Christmas by Sally Derby was an obvious story to choose for a program as I work on a bookmobile, and this book is based on a real bookmobile, named Blue Bird, from Wadsworth, Ohio.

The story, which takes place on the day before Christmas and in the face of a oncoming blizzard, has many different characters that board the bookmobile at the various stops.  However, Hannah and her Aunt Mary, the bookmobile librarian, are on the bookmobile greeting and helping their patrons throughout the entire story.  Because of this, I chose to make the book into a "box" story.  In a box story, the characters are attached to craft sticks, and holes are cut into the top of the box for the characters to be pushed into and stand up straight.  Characters can be left on the box "scene" for as long as needed and removed when they are not longer a part of the story.

Here, let me so you what I mean.  First, you need a box.  I have found that a paper box (one that contains reams of paper) works very well.  Then I "wrap" the bottom and top of the box separately with bulletin board paper that our library has on rolls.  You could use white butcher paper, brown wrapping paper, or any solid color wrapping paper from a craft or dollar store.  For this story, that takes place in a snowstorm, I chose to cover the box with plain white paper.

Then I found clip art of a book shelf and had it enlarged to the length of the box on the color copier.  We are fortunate to have a laminating machine at our library so I also had it laminated.  I cut out cardboard to the size of the illustration and then hot glued the illustration to the cardboard.  I then used book tape to attach the cardboard backed book  shelf picture to the top of the box.   I used a utility knife to cut slits in the box top.

  

Once the backdrop was done, I decided what characters I wanted to use from the book.  When we "tell" the story, most of the programmers tell it their own words and sometimes enhance certain parts and shorten others.  However, we always stay true to the story.  Since there were no illustrations in the book of the nursery school children, and some of the other illustrations were difficult to copy, I decided to use clip art "people."  I went to my collection of clip art books and found clip art for each of the characters I chose to feature.  I did need to modify some of the clothing.

To make the people, I enlarged the chosen clip art to the size I needed.  I usually make several copies in order to have enough to cut for the body and then the clothing.   I then cut out the artwork, and traced it onto craft foam sheets.  I used flesh or peach toned craft foam for the bodies, and then chose the colors for the clothing and hair.  I cut those out and use a glue gun and glue sticks to bond the pieces together.  I then used a permanent marker to draw facial features, lines on clothing and shoes, and anything else that needed outlined or delineated.

 

I then backed the foam characters with a piece of sturdy cardboard cut to the same size as the foam body.  You will need a utility knife or box cutter for this too.  I hot glued the cardboard to the foam character and then hot glued a craft stick to the cardboard.  For extra support, I also used book tape to secure the craft stick.

I also found the small gifts that the bookmobile customers bring to Hannah and Mary at craft and dollar stores.

Below is Hannah's Bookmobile Christmas as a box story in it's entirety.

I hope you enjoyed this demonstration and that you can use it for one of your Christmas storytimes.

Here are some more reviews from Amazon about Hannah's Bookmobile Christmas:

http://www.amazon.com/Hannahs-Bookmobile-Christmas-Sally-Derby/dp/product-description/0805064206