{"id":17503,"date":"2015-11-19T06:00:59","date_gmt":"2015-11-19T11:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=17503"},"modified":"2015-11-19T06:00:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-19T11:00:59","slug":"a-jammie-night-for-the-ages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=17503","title":{"rendered":"A Jammie Night for the Ages!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mallett School&#8217;s Prime Time Reading, aka Jammie Night, is my favorite event of the year. Obviously.\u00a0 After all it has some of the best ingredients an event could have: a shared love of reading, widespread community support and partnerships, great authors, a great crowd, amazing decorations, and pajamas.<br \/>\n<div style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/belldandy.booksite.com\/blimages\/ckupload\/imghMxxOkbook_week.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"263\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"5\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Author Elizabeth Bluemle thrills the crowd of a Jammie Night from years past!<\/p><\/div><br \/>\nHere&#8217;s how it works: The Mallett community comes back to school at 6:00 in the evening\u00a0\u2013 parents, kids, teachers, librarian, principal, all dressed in pajamas for an evening of read-alouds. I produce a children&#8217;s book author. The evening starts with that author reading her book to the assembled throng in the gymnasium, which has been lavishly decorated around the book&#8217;s theme. Afterwards, families can either go listen to one of five different community readers in five different classrooms, read together in the gym, or purchase a book and have the guest author sign it. The evening ends with the author reading a second book to the whole audience and then concludes with goodnights and more book signing.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nThe headliner of the 2015 event was the great and wonderful author Cynthia Lord. Since Mallet is a K-2 early elementary the focus of the evening was on Cynthias <em>Hot Rod Hamster<\/em> picture books and early readers. First let&#8217;s take a tour of the gym to see the decorations before any of the families had arrived.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/belldandy.booksite.com\/blimages\/ckupload\/imgfrLClrMallett_1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/belldandy.booksite.com\/blimages\/ckupload\/imgVgiKwiMallett_2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/belldandy.booksite.com\/blimages\/ckupload\/imgrHrZQfMallett_3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/belldandy.booksite.com\/blimages\/ckupload\/imgUb10dLMallett_4.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">These amazing decorations were the work of a team spearheaded by Mallet&#8217;s fab librarian Amanda Paradis Roberts.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/belldandy.booksite.com\/blimages\/ckupload\/imgXKb2Sjpt38.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">Not only had Amanda, pictured here in her hamster pajamas, carried out the gym decorations, she had planned to bring in a big surprise out front&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/belldandy.booksite.com\/blimages\/ckupload\/imgyP2GVXpt7.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">Actual Hot Rod Monster Trucks!<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/belldandy.booksite.com\/blimages\/ckupload\/imgwLctpwpt8.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">Here&#8217;s Cynthia making the scene and greeting some early attendees!<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/belldandy.booksite.com\/blimages\/ckupload\/imgVrY2S4pt21.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">Before everyone piled into the gymnasium, book sales and signing were positively frenetic.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/belldandy.booksite.com\/blimages\/ckupload\/img42KYUGpt78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Everything was ready. Now to introduce Cynthia!<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/belldandy.booksite.com\/blimages\/ckupload\/imgPg5Rlnpt35.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">And did she deliver?<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/belldandy.booksite.com\/blimages\/ckupload\/imgraDBdqpt30.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">That would be yes! Hot Rod books are all about helping the hamster choose from sets of things, tires, popsicles, helmets, and balloons. The kids chose and cheered!<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/belldandy.booksite.com\/blimages\/ckupload\/img2LT8jZpt39.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">And their parents had a big time too.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/belldandy.booksite.com\/blimages\/ckupload\/imgWPFaZtpt34.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Afterwards, it was time to sign more books and say good night. As Cynthia said, &#8220;What a wonderful and fun evening. It&#8217;s incredibly cute to see all the kids in their pajamas!&#8221; It really was a great night. Thanks, everybody!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An elementary school night of community reading, incredible decorations, and headliner Cynthia Lord.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}