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Top Ten Bookish Treats by Maria Selke and Crystal Brunelle
It is a fact universally acknowledged that a Nerdy Book Club member in possession of a good book must be in want of nothing.
Wait… did we mention that there would be treats? Everything is better if you add in a treat. Let’s update that old saying even more and say that a Nerdy Book Club member in possession of a good book still requires some themed treats to nibble while they read.
Bake Sale by Sara Varon
Raspberry Squares
Who can resist a graphic novel as sweet at this? Cupcake runs his own bakery, and he’s looking for just the right recipe. Readers young and old will appreciate the story, and making the treats shown in the back is a great family activity. My sons and I loved making the raspberry squares. Eating them was even better!
Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
November Cakes
Bee Bim Bop is a picture book with bouncy text that celebrates family cooking. I’ve shared the book with students resulting in plenty of smiles and giggles. We chant, “Hungry, hungry, hungry for some BEE-BIM BOP!” After reading the book many times, I was hungry for it myself. I purchased the kimchi, but the rest was easy to make. My family loved this yummy meal.
My daughter and I wanted to have a Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movie marathon, but thought it should be accompanied by plenty of food in honor of the Hobbits. On the menu for the multiple breakfasts: bacon, hard boiled eggs, *Breakfast Scones for Frodo, jam, fresh sourdough bread, *Bilbo’s Tea Cake, *Bag End Apple Bread, **Dwarven Pfefferneuse and hot tea. For lunch: *Po-Tay-To Onion Soup and fresh bread from the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. For dinner: *Rosie’s Shire Pie. We snacked on breakfast food all day long. The day was a carb fest. The marathon lasted from 7:15am to 1:30am and was a blast!
Every fan knows that Percy loves to eat anything blue. Is it his connection with the sea? My sons loved the fact that it was a little silly tradition he and his mother share. How can you celebrate reading – or rereading – this well loved series? Break out the blue food dye, because that’s really all it takes. My younger son and I enjoyed blue pancakes and juice before we caught the latest movie.
Tea Cakes for Tosh is a beautiful story of the love between a boy and his grandmother. Kelly Starling Lyons tells a wonderful story and she shares the recipe so we can make them and share them with a loved one too. They are simple and delicious.
Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester
Bento lunch
Doctor Who is a television series with a fifty year history. Whenever anything lasts that long, there are bound to be tomes dedicated to all the arcane bits of knowledge that go along with a fandom. It’s never hard to talk me into buying books, so we acquired a character encyclopedia and a Dalek handbook this summer. The most recent Doctor was known for enjoying fish fingers dipped in custard. We were a bit less adventurous and made our fish fingers from sugar cookies. Pretzel sonics and cookie TARDIS completed the fun. There are lots of Doctor adventures in novels, comics, and even audio books from Big Finish. Check out Karen Harris’ NBC post for specific titles!
Maria Selke is a gifted resource teacher in PA. She almost never smiles in the kitchen, except when making a bookish treat. She mostly hangs out online as @Mselke01 on Twitter.
Crystal Brunelle is a Teacher Librarian in WI. She’s loves to “read with her ears” in the kitchen while cooking and baking. She may be found on twitter as @librarygrl2.
Nerdy Book Club 
What a fantastic, inspiring, delicious post! Thank you both!!
Thanks! We had a lot of fun with it 🙂
Great post. They all look so good. I haven’t had breakfast yet, now I’m starving. Thanks for sharing these creative and yummy ideas.
Heheh… there are some great ones to try, and I bet the rest of the NBC has a ton of other ideas.
When I did a parent-child book club, the snack was ALWAYS related to the book in some way! It was just about the best part of the whole experience, in close second place behind reading and talking with kids and parents about books!! I love your examples!!
Books are awesome on their own, but with a bookish snack they move to a whole new level of awesomeness don’t they?
It’s all about celebrating our favorites, right?
Love this delicious post! Thanks for all the treats!
You’re welcome! We’d love to hear other ideas 🙂
I am so with you! Kids love to celebrate finishing a book by having a themed treat. Here are a few of my favorites in my elementary school library:
1) After reading THE PINBALLS by Betsy Byars, I always make a chocolate mayonnaise cake for the students. They think it’s going to be awful, but it’s the most moist, delicious cake ever. Everyone asks for the recipe.
2) LITTLE WHISTLE’S TEA PARTY by Cynthia Rylant begs for a tea party with vanilla wafers.
3) You can’t read Rosemary Well’s MCDUFF books without enjoying some vanilla rice pudding…but kids don’t really want the sausage sliced on top.
4) A SINGLE SHARD by Linda Sue Park calls for kim chi served in pottery bowls.
What great ideas! More fun things to try. Thanks!
Thanks for the great additions, Betsy!
Great post! Now I’m hungry!
Just a marvelous post, should be sent to the ALAMW this weekend to be shared with all librarians! Each idea is so delightful and creative, love those penguin rice balls!
Well, we certainly had a great Nerdy contingent at ALA!
We sure did! What a blast!
Great post! I really enjoyed being a part of the November Cake experience -YUM. Now that my 2 year old has had a crack at making cookies, bookish treats are right around the corner. Does anyone think pigs in a blanket will scar a two year old? He does talk to the big bad wolf like an imaginary friend : ) In fact the other night I was awoken to a roaring at 3 am. They were having some sort of late night party!
Love it, Get it, Live it. I am proned to snack and book themed meals too. I remember wanting to try November cakes after reading Scorpio Races and loved trying Tangle of Knots receipes BUT when I was a child, the one treat I so badly wanted and tried to imagine tasting was Turkish Delight as I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I know every reader wanted to. Thank goodness for the internet where we can now search for such treats. Bake Sale makes me remember Turkish Delight even tho it’s a character in the story.
I still haven’t been brave enough to try Turkish Delight though I too have been tempted. I’ve purchased it though. 🙂
I never had the guts to try to make my own Turkish Delight, but we have occasionally bought something similar from Liberty Orchards. That way we can get flavors that an American mouth can handle 🙂
This is so amazing and wonderful! Love that you pulled all these together! Wow! I must do this more often with my crew!
I love this post! Especially because I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the food that goes along with books. I recently read A SNICKER OF MAGIC and was so inspired by the decadent language that I had to try to make my own version of Dr. Zook’s famous blackberry sunrise ice cream. Then I recently just finished IN THE AGE OF LOVE AND CHOCOLATE where the main character opens a night club that serves a signature cacao drink called the theobroma which I had to try to recreate as well. Kitchen inspiration abounds between the pages of great books! 🙂
Now I really need to get my hands on A Snicker of Magic. I keep hearing about it. Chocolate is my favorite food group so I guess I need to read In the Age too. 🙂
MUST get Snicker of Magic!! I tried at ALA but their copies were not in the exhibit hall.
I just saw it on Netgalley, but I can’t possibly get any more digital ARCs. They are piling up & I have a bunch of reviews to do.
These all look like amazing ideas. I particularly love the Hobbit food idea. It looks delicious. I can’t believe that I’ve actually never made butterbeer, even though I drank it (and loved it) at the theme park. Also, I went to a Harry Potter convention once and a lady randomly gave my dad and me homemade chocolate frogs that were absolutely delicious. They even had marshmallow inside, which we didn’t know until eating them. They were better than the ones sold in the parks in my opinion.
I don’t really “make it”…. and the bottle I showed in the picture is amazing. You can get it imported from CA.
What an awesome post!! You are combining my two favorite things in the world: food and children’s books! Sharing. This is so perfect for a Book Club for Kids!!
Thanks! I’d love to hear what others have done.
Reader, I ate them! Great post……..feel hungry now!
These are fabulous ideas! We had a mother-daughter book club for a couple of years where the refreshments were always based on the book and it was a lot of fun!
Oh yum! Still hoping for a recipe for the sugar pies that made my mouth water (not to say drool) in Kathi Appelt’s “True Blue Scouts”!
Yes! I thought the same.
Great post. I have been thinking about A Tangle of Knots ever since I have read it! Looking for an excuse to try the cakes. This year I plan to cook George Washington’s Breakfast with my students. In the past (at least 8 years) it was a great success and well-remembered.
ohmygosh, love it. I just finished Scorpio Races and was hankering to make the november cakes (though I have to adjust for celiacs). fun post. And fish fingers in custard! the Dr. Who fan in me was geeking out!
Hmm…. I bet there is a way to make it with non-gluten flour. I found the recipe online was still a bit moist, and I had to add some extra flour. I wonder if that will be the case for nongluten flour?