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Campfire Songs For Monsters (Sipping Spiders Through A Straw) | 
| Author: Kelly Dipucchio
Creator: Gris Grimly
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Category: Book
List Price: $15.99
Buy New: $7.99
You Save: $8.00 (50%)
New (32) Used (13) from $3.85
Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 82624
Media: Hardcover
Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Pages: 40
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 10.6 x 10.5 x 0.3
ISBN: 0439584019
Dewey Decimal Number: 782.42083
EAN: 9780439584012
ASIN: 0439584019
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In this howlishly fun collection of campfire songs, little monsters everywhere will love singing along to their favorite campfire tunes which have been altered for optimal gross-out effect by the ghoulish Kelly DiPucchio and illustrated by the Master of Creep, Gris Grimly. Disgusting highlights include "If You're Scary and You Know It," "99 Bottles of Blood on the Wall," and the classic in the making, "Do Your Guts Hang Low?" Gather your creepy, crawly friends and get ready to slither and slink and howl and stink!
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 Three Silly Chicks Review November 15, 2008
Three Silly Chicks
It's summer! And that means it's time to camp! Chicks love camping. What could be more fun than roasting marshmallows and bean dip? S'more please! Though we must confess that it's hard keeping the dip on the stick. (And yes, we use a dipstick!) Oh how we love the smell of the smoke, the crackle of the fire, and creepy campfire stories and songs. It gives us the warm fuzzies and the shivers at the same time. Delish!
So imagine our delight at finding the perfect book of songs to share with little monsters. In Sipping Spiders Through a Straw, author Kelly DiPucchio and illustrator Gris Grimly strike a perfect balance of funny and creepy that kids that kids will simply gobble up. DiPucchio's text turns old favorites into funny new ones like "Blow, Blow, Blow Your Nose" and "99 Bottles of Blood on the Wall," and "Take Me Out to the Graveyard." Grimly adds an edgy, dark twist to the songs with his humorously gruesome pen and ink illustrations. Perfect for kids who like a little bit of scary with a whole lot of giggles.
My favorite new book for Halloween & campfire days October 23, 2008
A. D. Cox (northern PA, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Boo! Ooooooooooo! Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek! Sound effects from stories best told around a campfire, or with a flashlight at the slumber party. No matter how much adults may roll their eyes, or try to steer their kids away from the "Goosebumps" books, most kids like scary stories. What's the attraction? There's a lot of deep psychology behind that answer, as well as theories from many other fields of study, but suffice it to say here that what kids seem to like best is a story or song with equal parts of scary, gross, and funny mixed in. Do you know the old story about the voice chanting, "When I get you, I'm going to eat you!" and what the chanter was really after? If you can't remember it from your childhood, ask a `tween. Be prepared: the story itself is creepy in the telling, but "ew!" in the ending.
As we turn the calendar to October, I'd recommend picking up one of these sweet new kids' books instead of all the Halloween candy that's been in the stores since Labor Day.
My new discovery this fall is "Sipping Spiders Through a Straw: Campfire Songs for Monsters" - lyrics by Kelly DiPucchio, pictures by Gris Grimly. Grimly, whose style and work is now celebrated in its own right, cites his early influences from H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, and artist Edward Gorey. As for the lyrics, for those of you who have lived through "Great Green Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts" and/or "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells", as a kid yourself or as an adult now, this collection is better. Most of the words don't evoke anything too disgusting, and many are quite giggling-ly clever. Skip over any songs you don't want your kids singing, enjoy the ones you all get a laugh from, and enjoy the whimsical, strange drawings. The images and the words may be a little too much for those younger than 5 years old, I think - with my kindergarten-going nephew in mind. He would enjoy them, but his younger sister might be a little scared, or just not quite language-ready to keep up with the words. I would gleefully share this with my friends ages 5 and up, and find it especially useful to fill time entertaining kids at upcoming Halloween events.
 Monster mash-mallows October 8, 2008
E. R. Bird (Manhattan, NY)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Nine's a funny age. You're all about joining the older kids, reading their chapter books, and playing their games. So there's that. On the other hand, you still have a real appreciation for truly kid-like things. You want to simultaneously grow up and remain a child. You might visit a library one day and request a book of "scary stories" only to find that Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a bit much for you. With that in mind, people are going to pick up Kelly DiPucchio's Sipping Spiders Through a Straw: Campfire Songs for Monsters and wonder who the intended audience is. The songs, or mock-songs, are fun but the pictures walk the line between the funny and the truly disgusting, sometimes falling all the way one way or the other. I tell you now that this is a picture book for the kids who are on the cusp of denying they like books with 32 pages or less and are still comfortable getting a picture book that mixes humor with pictures that wrap the funny into the scary into the anarchic into the cool.
Basically you take your basic campfire songs. Your "I've Been Working on the Railroad"s and your "Do Your Ears Hang Low"s, and you notice that very few of these songs are monster-appropriate. That's where Kelly DiPucchio and Gris Grimly come in. Rewriting the whole campfire genre, this gruesome twosome punches up the old classics with monster-friendly pictures alongside. Eighteen of the grizzly tunes are presented here with dark companion illustrations by the master of introductory Goth. They may be grossed out. They may be disgusted. One thing you readers will not be is bored.
It makes for ideal reading aloud, I can tell you. The same kids that sing that old campfire song "I'm Looking Over My Dead Dog Rover" (sung to the tune of "I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover") are going to be the ones that cackle gleefully over DiPucchio's selections and Grimly's naughty pics. Full Confession: I was one of those Girl Scouts that loved a grody or dark rhyme to sing. Any child that knows all the words to "Miss Susie Had a Baby" or other naughty schoolyard chants of the same will want to bulk up their repertoire with DiPucchio's wild song selections. Teachers and librarians won't have any difficulty gaining the undivided attention of their students either if they partake of a little "Zombie Midge" (sung to the tune of "London Bridge") or "Creepy, Creepy Little Jar" ("Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"). And admit it. You thought the song was "My Body Lies Over the Ocean" anyway, didntcha?
I appreciated that the songs make mockeries of the usual suspects ("99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall", "Take Me Out to the Ballgame") but also added in a couple unexpected treats. I've never seen an author rewrite the words to "Skinnamarink" before, but it certainly fits here with its cheery, "Slither and slink and stink and wink / Slither and stinky-doooo- / We . . . scare . . . you!" DiPucchio's been making children's books long enough that you don't have to worry about whether or not the lines and phrases will scan either. There's nothing worse than holding up a book and attempting to read/sing it to a class only to find that while you may be struggling along well enough, the author has somehow forgotten how many syllables should ideally go in each line. Not a problem here. Not a problem at all.
The pairing of Gris Grimly with DiPucchio is a fascinating one because her books are normally paired with relatively light and colorful artists. People like LeUyen Pham or Richard Egielski. Grimly's great, sure. I mean he just paired with Neil Gaiman to bring us the world's darkest abecedarian delight The Dangerous Alphabet. So to see him alongside DiPucchio is fascinating. It's like adding a dollop of delicious all-natural arsenic to a cup of warm milk.
Grimly's style when drawing for kids is a mix of the frightening and the ridiculous. While a Stephen Gammell might draw on the darkest corners of the human brain to scare the living daylights out of a child, Grimly usually includes some small detail that detracts from the overall horror. For example, in this book you may face with fear an army of frightening Boogie Men, all distorted jaws and pupilless eyes. But after a second or two it's hard to ignore the fact that they are standing in front of you in their underwear. And come to think of it, these guys could stand to cut down on their carbs. A Boogie Man, for all his power, is somehow less threatening when there's a beer belly to contend with. Making use of his usual watercolors, Grimly appears to be employing a little mixed media here as well. I'm not sure if that's new for this illustrator or not, but certainly the doily that accompanies the jar of a pickled something-something is of this world.
You will find, o gentle viewers, that when a concerned parent comes up to you about this book it will not be because of the text. Certainly the words will say "Do Your Guts Hang Low" and the artist would have had to have been a timid timmy indeed to avoid drawing intestines, but the blame is still gonna rest with the pics of splayed internal organs. And there will be complaints somewhere. Don't let it bother you. Heck, people will complain about the dead elephant in The Story of Babar if you let them. Just ride it out, read them an amusing poem, and if they're still not convinced hand them a Mary Engelbreit title to keep the peace.
The obvious pairing of this book is with similarly rhyming monster-laden picture books. Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich and its companion piece Frankenstein Takes the Cake are fond of original poems (though Rex is happy to rewrite "It's a Small World" or a little Edgar Allen Poe if the mood hits) and use a broader variety of different art styles than what you'll find here. Both, however, offer ghoulies and ghosties for the child masses, and if a kid is howling for more Frankenstein then this is the best possible companion piece for that particular tot. Grosser and darker than a lot of the usual picture book fare, it's bound to have its fans and detractors by turns. For that special kid, however, this is gonna be beloved (to say nothing of that special teacher/librarian too).
Sipping Spiders July 23, 2008
K. Cutler (Santa Rosa, California)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
DiPucchio, Kelly. Sipping Spiders Through A Straw: Campfire songs for Monsters. Pictures by Gris Grimly. Scholastic Press. 2008.
This book contains a mix of deliciously funny, ghoulish, and sometimes even quite gross replacement lyrics for familiar songs. "A-camping we will go with monster friends in tow" replaces the regular lyrics of "The Farmer in the Dell". Instead of singing, "Take me out to the ballgame", substitute "Take me out to the graveyard. Take me out to the tombs. Buy me worms from that Quasi named Jack. I don't care `bout that hump on his back". Be prepared for the truly disgusting, "Blow, blow, blow your nose sick and stuffy ghost. Pick it, and poke it, and pull it out, and spread it on your toast." If you do not know the original song, you will have to "Google" to learn the tune. Primarily black and brown tone watercolor and mixed media illustrations accompany the lyrics revealing figures with elongated and exaggerated appendages and spiked and scraggly hair.
With new, fun songs set to old tunes, such as '99 Bottles of Blood on the Wall' June 15, 2008
Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Kelly DiPucchio's lyrics in SIPPING SPIDERS THROUGH A STRAW: CAMPFIRE SONGS FOR MONSTERS tells of monster sing-alongs with new, fun songs set to old tunes, such as '99 Bottles of Blood on the Wall' and 'A-Camping We Will Go'. Gris Grimly's zany drawings enhance a fun set of sing-along modifications.
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