Book Exchange Party

Do your kids devour books with their love of reading? If so, a fun, low-key party to hold would be a book exchange. This could be a birthday party theme, or simply a gathering of friends who are interested in exchanging and discussing books on a casual afternoon.

Send out your party details on a bookmark that the kids can keep to use. Make sure to ask your guests to bring a book or as many books as they would like to swap, along with a tote bag to carry home their books. The more books the merrier at this party. They could also wrap their books for further surprise depending on how you wanted to organize the swap. A last idea is to ask your guests to come dressed in their favorite book character!

If you don’t ask your guests to bring tote bags to the party, you may want to provide them with a bag for them to carry their books home in.

When the kids arrive, some crafts that the kids can make at the party are bookmarks and book plates. These items, along with the books they receive at the exchange scan be the goodies taken home from the gathering.

Have the kids guess what character they are dressed up as.

Read aloud clues to describe favorite characters from books well-loved by all. The kids have to guess the character being described. You could also hand out slips of paper with characters on them and the kids would have to act them out for the others to guess.

For the book swap, if the books are wrapped, have the kids all pull numbers. Whoever pulled “one” gets to choose a book first. He leaves it unwrapped beside himself. When the person who pulled number two takes a turn they can either decide to keep the book they have unwrapped or “steal” the book away from another who has already opened a book and has it beside them. This is a fun game, especially if the guests have brought one book wrapped.

If guests have brought bunches of books to exchange, set them all out on a table and make it look like a book shop. The kids are free to take as many books as they like during the exchange. Try and promote giving and receiving here, as well as if one kid really wants a book to take into consideration and give it to her. If there is an argument over one particular book, have a fair way to determine who gets in, i.e. picking a number closest to the one that is in your hand or have a sticky pad of notes available and after the first person is doing reading it, they must give it to the next person. Of course, this will only work if these kids are friends and see each other regularly.

Use the Wilton Book Cake Pan to make for an unforgettable book party ending!