Watch how a group of students take a song about sex appeal and make it about smarts. Alison’s charming video with the pint-sized Hamlet yesterday reminded me that I’d been meaning to share this one, which has been making the rounds recently, and I can’t tell you how much I love it!! What a fun school environment! What great kids!!! Somehow, I’ll just bet they have a great library there in Milwaukee.

This has me all jazzed up to reclaim a bunch of songs featuring scantily clad women gyrating, and turn them into girl-power, kid-power, reading-power power ballads, pop songs, and raps. Any ideas? I’ll start.
POKER FACE becomes READING RACE, to celebrate a county-wide reading competition (can’t you hear it now? “ma-ma-ma-my reading race…”.)
DISTURBIA becomes DYSTOPIA, and the lyrics booktalk a bunch of great novels in the genre.
HOLLABACK GIRL becomes, of course, PAPERBACK GIRL.
GET UR FREAK ON becomes GET UR READ ON.
And really, so much could be done with The Black-Eyed Peas’ LET’S GET IT STARTED (already a revamp of a less appetizing version of itself), the mind reels. Listen to the murmur growing: reading-reading and reading-reading….
With apologies to the band, it would go something like this:
And the kids keep readin’ readin’, and readin’ readin’, and readin’ readin’, and readin’ readin’, and readin’ readin’, and readin’ readin’, and readin’ readin’, and readin’ readin’, and…
In this chapter, there’s some laughter, we got to finish it, there’s math after.
We got five minutes to reach the denoument, so don’t hem and haw, work your jaw read loud now
Characters are in a pickle, a villain holds a sickle, there’s suspense you feel the hair back of your neck prickle.
And when we read yeah, we succeed, yeah.
You won’t believe how much we know about.
Read till the light’s burned out.
How does it all turn out?
Books are from north, west, east, south.
Everybody, everybody, let’s get into it.
Get reading
Get it started, get it started, get it started.
Let’s get it started (ha), let’s get it started in here.
Let’s get it started (ha), let’s get it started in here.
Let’s get it started (ha), let’s get it started in here.
Let’s get it started (ha), let’s get it started in here. Yeah.
You have any hit song/reading mash-up ideas to share? Post ’em here.