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The following titles are favorite middle-grade read-alouds, books that inspired our own books.

Welcome to my second Summer round up of free activity sheets from authors and illustrators – whether the rain is continuing to pour where you are, or you just need to keep the kids happy for half an hour whilst you get on with something else, hopefully there’s something for you here today.

Click on the relevant image or coloured link to be taken to activity sheets you can download.

Ethan Long has colouring in, word searches and mazes to go with his very funny books, great for emerging readers, fabulous for all the family to have a giggle over.

Over at Jez Alborough’s website you can find the Hug Club, packed with drawing games, quizzes, colouring in and more.

Leigh Hodgkinson has some wonderfully inventive activities for you to download (you’ll need to click on the button, and then on “Crafty Bits”). I particularly like the cut out Colin in a box…

If your kids are fans of the books by Andrew Norriss, including Aquila and The Portal, you shouldn’t miss this page packed full of activities relating to the books. There are crosswords, word searches and quizzes.

Publishers Maverick Books have over 20 different activity sheets to download, going with all of their different books. There’s a Mrs MacCready to colour in, a How to draw your own Beastie tutorial, Dog Detective quiz sheets and more.

0 Comments on 2nd set of free activity sheets from authors and illustrators – Summer 2012 as of 8/9/2012 5:09:00 PM

By Nina Schuyler, The Children’s Book Review
Published: April 5, 2012

Photo credit: Jasmic

In his essay, “Hypocritical Theory,” in Manhood for Amateurs, Michael Chabon opens with the provocative, “I hate Captain Underpants.” Yes, Chabon agrees the popular series written by Dav Pilkey is “lively, well crafted and snappily designed,” and if he was a kid, he’d probably love the books, too. Really, how could he not enjoy the two potty-minded fourth grade boys who invent Super Diaper Baby? What he hates is that the series has co-opted the gross humor that kids use, typically out of earshot of adults. “The original spirit of mockery has been completely inverted; it is now the adult world that mocks children, implicitly and profitably, speaking its old language, invoking its bygone secret pleasures,” writes Chabon.

If Chabon has trouble with Captain Underpants, he’s probably having a big hissy fit over the scores of books that have followed suit. Writers and publishers have taken note that humor is the way to a kid’s (especially a boy’s) reading heart.  Just this morning, as I drove the carpool of third-grade boys to school, one boy was holding court by reading from The Encyclopedia of Immaturity (full of silly tricks and pranks—how to make noises with different body parts; how to really annoy your older sibling; and the all-important, how to hang a spoon off your nose).

Since the genie has been let out of the bottle, and since April is National Humor Month, I’ve put together a list of some recently published books that will keep your kid laughing (and reading).

Stone Rabbit #7: Dragon Boogie

By Erik Craddock

Erik Craddock is out with #7 in his Stone Rabbit graphic novel series, with its central character a zany, quick-witted rabbit. In #7 Dragon Boogie, when the electricity goes out, Stone Rabbit and his buddies have to play a boring board game, Dragon & Stuff. They unknowingly roll a pair of magical die, and poof! they are transported to the world of the game itself, with wizards and knights, and a dragon with a “bad case of stink breath” who takes offense at being called fat. Eventually they confront the Lord of Darkness, and the fight is on, with one of their weapons being, of course, a “mighty fart.” (Ages 7-10. Publisher: Random House Children’s Books)

Lunch Lady #7: Lunch Lady and the Mutant Mathletes

By Jarrett J. Krosoczka

Jarrett J. Krosoczka is back with