{"id":1288,"date":"2011-10-13T21:13:25","date_gmt":"2011-10-14T01:13:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/?p=1288"},"modified":"2011-10-13T21:14:33","modified_gmt":"2011-10-14T01:14:33","slug":"happy-cookies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/happy-cookies\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Cookies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two days ago we got invited to a party with the Stanley Cup at the Garden (the photo of Jim and me with the Cup is here<\/a>), which was very, very cool.\u00a0 While we were sitting at a table at the party, I noticed that the kids in attendance were totally <\/em>jazzed about the special Bruins cookies that party guests could pick up after getting their photo taken.\u00a0 “Hmmmm,” I thought to myself, “I know Jim and Bill and Judy and I aren’t going to eat our Bruins cookies…what if I brought them to the library and raffled them off to the library kids who come every day after school?\u00a0 Hmmmmm…”\u00a0 Especially perfect for a library, since the Bruins were the official sponsors of the Massachusetts summer reading program for the last three summers.<\/p>\n

So I carefully carried home three of the cookies, making sure not to crack them or melt the frosting, and first thing yesterday morning I put them on display at the children’s desk with raffle tickets and a bucket (and\u00a0the photo of me and Jim with the Cup), asking that only kids enter and that each kid only enter once.<\/p>\n

And, boy, was that raffle a hit.\u00a0 I had planned to draw the three winning names at 4:00 this afternoon, but one of my favorite fifth graders came up to me at 3:30 and said, “Abby.\u00a0 When are you drawing the names for the cookies.”\u00a0 Not a question, mind you, but a statement.\u00a0 I told\u00a0 her I was planning on 4:00, and she looked me in the eye and didn’t say anything.\u00a0 “Are you leaving before 4?” I asked.\u00a0 Yes was the answer, so I told her that I would just ask the other kids in the room if they had entered the raffle – to give everyone a fair shot – and that I would then draw the names.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0few\u00a0minutes\u00a0of happy chaos ensued, as the dozen or so afterschool kids swarmed the desk so that they could each fill out a raffle ticket.\u00a0 I had thought that maybe I would duck into my office to quietly pull the winning names, but as I looked around it was obvious that was NOT an option: the crowd wanted to witness the drawing to be sure it was fair.\u00a0 So I took a deep breath and pulled\u00a0the name…of a child who wasn’t in attendance.\u00a0\u00a0Time to move fast –\u00a0the crowd looked ready to turn on\u00a0me.\u00a0 I drew the second name – of a fifth grade boy who clearly is a huge Bruins fan.\u00a0 He chose his cookie (the Stanley Cup cookie) with triumph, and I drew the last name.\u00a0 This time a sweet third grader won, and grinned from ear to ear as he chose his cookie (the Bruins banner).<\/p>\n

Luckily,\u00a0the non-winners were mostly older kids and all excellent sports, bearing their cookie loss with aplomb.\u00a0 And joy, too, because it was such a fun spontaneous moment that none of us had expected on a rainy afternoon.\u00a0 The fifth grade winner let his friends look at his cookie before leaving happily, and the third grader spent a good half hour looking at books on the shelves while holding tightly on to his cookie.<\/p>\n

And then an hour or so later, the little girl whose name I drew first came in, and I asked her if she had gotten my phone message.\u00a0 No, she said, looking puzzled, so I held up her cookie and told her that she had won.\u00a0 She was so happy that she couldn’t speak – she went over to her mom with the cookie, all smiles and shining eyes.\u00a0 The family stayed looking at books for a while, and the little girl held her cookie the whole time, cracking it a bit in the plastic bag while she thought out loud about how she would eat it: a little bit each night, with some ice cream.\u00a0 Kind of reminded me of Frances holding the Chompo bar on her way home from the store…<\/p>\n

All in all, it was much, much more fun than if we grownups had eaten the cookies Tuesday night!\u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two days ago we got invited to a party with the Stanley Cup at the Garden (the photo of Jim and me with the Cup is here), which was very, very cool.\u00a0 While we were sitting at a table at the party, I noticed that the kids in attendance were totally jazzed about the special … Continue reading Happy Cookies<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-children","category-librarianship","category-library-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1288"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1292,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1288\/revisions\/1292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}