Posted on by TracyC

Raggedy Ann’s Tea Party Book

Raggedy Ann’s Tea Party Book by Elizabeth Silbaugh, illustrated by Laura Francesca Filippucci, 1999.

This book is a children’s guide to planning a tea party with Raggedy Ann. As in the original books, Raggedy Ann is a doll who lives with a girl named Marcella, and she likes to have tea parties with Marcella’s other dolls and stuffed animals.

The book explains how to plan and prepare for a tea party, from figuring out how many guests there will be and making sure there are enough seats for everyone to choosing a menu and games to play. There are tips for making party invitations and a section of recipes in the back of the book.

The food ideas aren’t too complicated. The book recommends keeping preparations simple because a party is about having fun. Setting the table is an activity by itself. Raggedy Ann gets her guests to help her, and they put on music while they do it. They want to make the table setting pretty, and they make sure that everyone knows each other and is included in the conversation. Tea parties are a time to practice good manners and make sure everyone is enjoying the party. At the end of the party, guests can also help clean up while they play music.

For games to play, they recommend the classic game of Telephone, Fiddly Diddly (a guessing game), and Memory Tray, where guests look at a tray of objects for a limited amount of time and then try to remember everything they’ve seen.

The recipes included in the book are:

  • Easy Chocolate Cakes
  • Creamy Pink and White Icing
  • Tiny Sandwiches – They suggest a variety of possible fillings, including tuna, ham, tomato, hard-boiled egg, cucumbers, cheese, fruit, or jam.
  • Raggedy Ann’s Candy-Heart Cookies – These are heart-shaped cutout cookies because Raggedy Ann has a candy heart.
  • Uncle Clem’s Super-Simple Scotch Shortbread
  • Marcella’s Lemonade

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). There is another book by the same author called Raggedy Ann’s Birthday Party Book, about planning a birthday party.

My Reaction

I found it charming and nostalgic, and I loved the colorful pictures! I didn’t read this book as a child, but it is the kind of book I would have liked. The party-planning tips are useful, taking child readers step-by-step through planning the party, inviting the guests, and preparing food and entertainment. I liked the advice to keep things simple, so even the host/hostess can enjoy the party instead of getting stressed over complicating preparations. The recipes in the book fit the tea party theme, and they are simple enough for children to make or at least help in their preparation without being overly simplistic.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Little Witch’s Valentine Book

The Little Witch’s Valentine Book by Linda Glovach, 1984.

Like other Little Witch Craft Books, this one gives holiday-themed craft instructions, party tips, and recipes.  The book starts out with a brief explanation about the purpose and origin of the Valentine’s Day holiday and then gives a section about Valentine-themed crafts.  Some of them also relate back to the witch theme of our craft hostess, like Valentine-themed witch hats, which is a little odd, but fun.

There is a section of crafts that you can make as small gifts for people or prizes for some of the party games given later. The small crafts include finger puppets, a box decorated with an owl with a heart-shaped head, and a butterfly pin with heart wings.  There are also instructions for a Valentine-themed rag doll with a witch’s hat, and the instructions recommend that boys make an old man version of the doll by adding a beard.  The dolls have heart-shaped faces.

Under the party suggestions, the book recommends having a Queen of Hearts Tart Party for an Alice in Wonderland tie-in.  It gives instructions for making playing card costumes that are kind of like sandwich board signs. 

There are two party games described in the book, both based on the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland.  One of the games is the “Off With Your Head Hunt” where players have to find missing heart halves with matching symbols on them that are hidden somewhere in the room.  The name of the game comes from the person who will be playing the Queen of Hearts, who gives the players their instructions and shouts “Off With Your Head!” while the players hunt for the heart halves to appease the queen.  (Yep, really.) The second game is the “Pass the Queen’s Red-Hot Heart Game.” It says that “The Heart is red-hot because it belongs to the queen.” It’s similar to the game Hot Potato. The players stand in a circle, passing a paper heart very quickly from one person to the next while someone plays music. When the music stops, the person who is holding the heart is out of the game. The game continues until only one person is left, and that person wins.

The recipes section offers treats that you can make for your Valentine’s Day party or just for fun, including Queen of Heart Tart Biscuits, Heart Cookies, Strawberry-Banana Valentine Monster Mash, and strawberry pancakes.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

The Little Witch’s Halloween Book

The Little Witch’s Halloween Book by Linda Glovach, 1975.

This book is part of the Little Witch series of craft and hobby books.  This one is all about Halloween activities and suggestions for Halloween parties. The book is divided into sections for cards and decorations, parties and celebrations, and trick or treat.  The Little Witch’s Code in the beginning has rules for Halloween safety such as having an adult inspect Halloween treats before the child eats them and going trick-or-treating in a group instead of alone. It also advises collecting for charities while trick-or-treating and not playing tricks on people.

The section about cards has Halloween card designs in different shapes. The party section also has a pumpkin card design to use as an invitation, but really, any of the cards could be invitations or party decorations.

The party section has instructions for games and decorations. One of the games is a pumpkin cake eating contest and a recipe for a pumpkin cake, which oddly does not include any pumpkin, only the spices that are typically included in pumpkin pie. It’s more like a spice cake or gingerbread, and it’s decorated to look like a jack o’lantern face.

Other games and party treats include traditional ones, like dunking for apples and toasting marshmallows, but there are also some original games, like the Wicked Witch’s Candy House. That game involves party guests taking candy from a tray on top of a cardboard playhouse made from a large cardboard box while the “witch” inside tries to guess who they are. There is also a cute fortune-telling game.

The section about trick-or-treating has more recipes and instructions for making a treat bag and making jack o’lanterns out of oranges.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Ghosts, Witches, and Things Like That

GhostsWitchesThings

Ghosts, Witches, and Things Like That by Roderick Hunt, 1984.

This is a collection of information about the history of Halloween and other things related to Halloween, like folklore, games, recipes, crafts, and poems.  There are sections about specific topics, starting with the section about Halloween itself (spelled Hallowe’en, this is a British book).  The section about Halloween talks about the origins of the holiday and has tips for holding a Halloween party, including how to make costumes and decorations, the rules for games to play (including some old traditional games), and recipes for various Halloween treats.

Other sections of the book focus on various monsters and mythical creatures associated with Halloween, such as witches, ghosts, fairies werewolves, and vampires.  There is a section of ghost stories and some fascinating historical information about spiritualists and how people have faked ghosts in the past, including the Pepper’s Ghost illusion that is still used in the haunted house in Disneyland.  The sections about witches, fairies, and monsters also include a mixture of history and folklore along with some jokes and poems about the various creatures.

GhostsWitchesHistory

This is a fun book to read around Halloween.  It’s a mixture of historical background, folklore, party-planning tips, games, and recipes.  I think that the information about traditional games is still my favorite part.

GhostsWitchesApples

Posted on by TracyC

How to Haunt a House for Halloween

HauntAHouse

How to Haunt a House for Halloween by Friedhoffer, the Madman of Magic, with Harriet Brown, 1988.

This book was written by a magician to provide tips for setting up a haunted house for a party, either in your house with friends or in a more public setting, like a school, camp, or church party or carnival.  It starts with basic preparation tips, like deciding the type of haunted house you want, making sure that you have permission for the project from the person in charge (whether it’s parents or a school principal), mapping out the available space and what you would like to put in it, and making lists of invited guests.

The book advises setting a mood and storyline for the haunted house, with a script to follow based around the type of ghost story you have in mind surrounding the house.  A well-told story with the proper atmosphere helps to draw the audience in and keep them in the right frame of mind.

There are tips to appeal to different senses with the haunted house effects, including sound (spooky noises) and touch (things people will feel as they walk through the house but not necessarily see).

Many of the haunted house tricks described are basically magic tricks, which makes sense for a book written by a magician.  Some are costumes for “ghosts” in the haunted house like an “Elongating Ghost” (a ghost that can grow unnaturally tall) and a headless man.  The last section of the book describes how to hold a fake seance.  The beginning emphasizes that it’s more important to perform simple effects well than to have fancy effects.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.