The Have You READ It? Game Show — the Game to Get Kids Thinking and Talking About Great Books

 

The Have You READ It? Game Show, hosted by Bob Bookmark and Rita Digest, is our very playful spoof of a TV Quiz Show about books that is part of every Bodacious Book Show assembly program.

For more than fifteen years, our Bodacious Book Shows have been a featured part of PARP and reading programs at hundreds of Elementary schools. Educators, administrators and parents have seen that the fun approach we bring to books is an effective tool for motivating reluctant readers. Our Bodacious Book Shows work because they help students recall the fun they’ve had with the books they’ve read; help them feel good sharing their reading experiences with their fellow students; and entice them to read more by making everything about books fun and exciting — and an integral element of the success of these programs is “The Have You READ It? Game Show” which gets the entire audience thinking and talking about great books.

Great books make great readers. Discovering that you love a book and want to read it again can begin a lifelong habit of reading. It’s important to expand and reinforce a young reader’s relationship with the books they’ve read through experiential activities that actualize the joy inherent in reading good books. We first created the Bodacious Book Show with a New York State grant to support library reading programs and included this game show component to get kids to share their excitement about books they’ve read and hear about other great books they might love.

Bob Bookmark

Hosts Bob Bookmark and Rita Digest play The Have You READ It? Game with the entire audience all at once — rather than just getting a few students on stage as contestants. We get the whole audience raising their hands to answer questions and even shouting them out when it’s a classic book that everyone knows. The questions range from ones we know that all the students will know (like “What kind of eggs does Sam like with his ham?”) to some tough ones that only the better readers will know (“Who lives in London at 221B Baker Street?”) — because we want to make everyone feel good about the books they’ve read AND give kudos to the best readers, like the 5th grader we saw in one audience getting high fives from her classmates because she knew the answer was “Sherlock Holmes.”

Rita Digest

The competition of a game show is an effective tool for maximizing audience participation, though at the same time we don’t ever want to make a student feel like a loser when we’re talking about reading and books, so the questions are crafted to suit the grade and reading level of each audience and we always make sure all the students are winners by how we set up the teams: for school day assembly programs we divide the audience into two teams, the students vs. the teachers (or kids vs. their parents for family audiences). Yes, the students always win, but we do keep the teachers engaged with some playful questions just for them — while never putting them on the spot. The whole show is played strictly for laughs, with bells and whistles, special bonus questions and comic game show touches like our “Wheel of Reading” and “Name that Animal.”

What a kid reads is as important as how much, so in our assembly programs we focus on tried and true children’s classics and exciting multicultural and adventure stories, with Have You READ It? Game Show questions that draw on special reading lists we’ve devised  in consultation with teachers and librarians for each of the 3 different versions of our Bodacious Book Shows.

Learn more about all of our school programs

Abercrombie & Fitch Spring Quarterly 2000

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Abercrombie & Fitch Spring Quarterly 2000 cover, photograph by Bruce Weber

Abercrombie & Fitch Spring Quarterly 2000 cover, photograph by Bruce Weber

In October of 1999, the photographer Bruce Weber saw me painting animal faces in a mask-like style at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine’s annual St. Francis Day Fair. He hired me to do bodypainting for a photo shoot for the Abercrombie & Fitch Spring Quarterly 2000. Survivor was a hit on TV, so they were going for that, with the models like castaways — he gave me one instruction, “Lord of the Flies”, and when I told him I knew what he meant, he let me paint. I painted 19 models in about 3 hours in a swamp in Florida. He photographed each of the models separately (for the cover and an interior 4 page spread), and then the full group as the sun was starting to set. The foto he chose for the cover was of a model painted in a baboon spirit mask design I had been experimenting with all that summer, as we had been incorporating African mask styles into our faces for the opening of the Congo Gorilla Rain Forest at the Bronx Zoo that year. This gallery includes some of his photos (scanned from the quarterly), and a few of my own snapshots from that session. Return to our main website: agostinoarts.com

Return to our main website: agostinoarts.com

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UV Makeup and Blacklight Special Effects

 

We use UV makeups to create special effects under backlight for parties and events, and to add dayglo “pop” to our face and body painting. Special effects paintings range from fully painted glowing models, 60s style Go-Go Dancers and specialty bodypainting for clubs and evening events.

Working with UV makeups is like painting with light. We’ve used these effects for theme events ranging from “Under the Sea” Bar Mitzvahs to Woodstock themed corporate events. We’ve painted participants for Laser-Tag nights at colleges and created a Live Action Blacklight bodypainting stage performance as entertainment for conventions.

Christopher Agostino is recognized for his facility with UV makeups and has developed special techniques that allow him to create designs that work well under regular light as well as blacklight, which is especially useful for clubs and events where only part of a venue is under blacklight. His appearances for the Kryolan Professional Makeup company often include demonstrations of their UV Aquacolor makeups, widely considered the best UV product on the market.

“Crocodile Eating Jose” – demonstrating the use of Kryolan’s UV Aquacolors to create optical illusions and special effects at the 2012 Face and Body Art International Convention

UV Blacklight Live Action Bodypaint Performance:

The same painting under regular light and black light

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Learn about Transformations Face Painting for Events

To learn more about all our programs and performances:  http://www.agostinoarts.com

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