Wimpy! Wimpy! Wimpy!

Yes, the Ides of November marks the publication of the sixth book in the fabulous series of everyone's favorite middle school slacker, Greg Heffley, and his always amusing exploits as chronicled in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Since we will use any excuse to host a Wimpy Kid book party, we threw a pre-publication bash yesterday that was easy, fun and very popular with the kids (and adults) that attended.

Key to our success is - we contacted the publisher for an events kit. That resulted in special game pages - but also in delivery of a stand-up display, free posters, bookmarks and pencils!! Thanks Abrams!  You made my job uber easy.

We started out having the kids put their names in a sock for a grand prize drawing for two Wimpy pens we scored as swag at the ALA exhibits.  After reading a letter from the author (part of the Abrams events packet) and talking a bit about the books, we played two games of Wimpy trivia bingo (also from the packet).  The fan-kids knew most of the answers which is what makes this so much fun.

This was followed by our....um, more active party games. Since snow, blizzards and icy weather are prominently featured in Cabin Fever, we decided to let kids "ice skate" on the carpet by stepping on paper plates and gliding around the room. Simply boffo.  This was followed by our ever-popular Manny Cereal Toss - kids got chances to try and toss mini-cereal boxes into a toilet seat placed atop a waste basket. This never fails to please the crowd.  We wrapped up with the kids dividing into two teams, crumpling up recycled paper into snowballs and having a snowball fight.

We had lots more stuff but ran out of time.  So kids took home a word search and Zoo Wee Mama cartoons to fill in the word balloons.  Now if we could just get those ten new copies of the book in and processed....

For more Wimpy Kid parties we do check here and here.