To celebrate the closing of Charlie Bumpers’s 4th grade year that comes with the release of the final book in the series, Charlie Bumpers vs. the End of the Year, we’re giving everyone a peek inside Charlie Bumpers’ “yearbook.” Hear from some of Charlie’s biggest fans and greatest friends through the years!

Sue Poduska, Grade Reading

Charlie,

It’s been a great year with you, Tommy, and Hector. You never take the easy way out, even though you think you’re doing the right thing. Seems there’s a right way to do things, a wrong way, and a Charlie way. Sorry the adults in your world tend to go into emergency mode. But at least your big brother watches out for you. Just learn to ignore your little sister. Have a wonderful summer and a great fifth grade.

Your friend,
Sue

Laura Palermo, Education and Library Sales at Peachtree

You’re a good friend (and a really nice gnome!), Charlie Bumpers! I’ll never forget you.

Karen Yingling, Ms. Yingling Reads

Dear Charlie,

Fourth grade has been a challenging year for you, but you have made it through with good humor, and I am glad that you shared your exploits with me. After the shoe throwing incidents at the beginning of the year, it was great to see you do such an impressive job with your role as a gnome in the school play. It was also good to see that your soccer team had a successful season– I think I still have a candy bar in my freezer from your fundraising efforts. I hope that things are looking up for your family with your father’s new job, and that your cousin Chip has not thrown up any more Swedish fish at your house!

Fifth grade will be another adventure for you, even though I know you will miss Hector very much. I will look forward to having your sister Squid in a few years, and I hope that you take sure you take Ginger for some nice, long walks this summer.

Best Wishes,

Ms. Yingling

Kate Unger, Mom’s Radius

My son and I love this series. I love how funny the Charlie books are. And I enjoy how they address real-life problems that kids face. It gave us great things to discuss while we were reading the books.

Vicky Holifield, Charlie Bumpers Editor at Peachtree

Dear Charlie,

Holy moly! What fun it was to relive the fourth grade with you! Thanks for all the stupific memories from the year: your incredible rabid bat Halloween costume, your brother Matt’s terrifying stories of the Long-Fingered Man, all those wacky adventures with your best friends Tommy and Hector, the narrow escape from the Jerzollies of Darkness, Mrs. Burke’s POWerful finger-snaps, and even the Squid’s annoying first-grade songs!

And will I ever forget your kindness toward others (especially Hector), your admirable (though sometimes a bit misguided) attempts to make the best of a disastrophe, your enthusiastic spirit, and your honest wish to do the right thing? To quote your favorite superhero Buck Meson: I DON’T THINK SO!!

Your biggest fan,

Vicky

Leave your yearbook note to Charlie (or author Bill Harley) in the comments below, and we’ll share them as we reminisce and celebrate Charlie all week!

Charlie Bumpers vs. the End of the Year
Written by Bill Harley and illustrated by Adam Gustavson

It’s the end of an era! Since its debut, the Charlie Bumpers series, written by Grammy-Award-winning author Bill Harley, has been praised as “fast-paced” and “enjoyable,” with “naturally funny moments” (School Library Journal). Charlie Bumpers vs. the End of the Year ends the series on a high, warm-hearted note, celebrating friends and family, and making the best of a bad situation.

When Charlie learns that Hector’s family is moving back to Chile at the end of the year, he is crushed. With Tommy’s help, he immediately starts cooking up schemes to keep Hector here, including a campaign to get him selected as next year’s School Ambassador. (Surely Hector will have to stay, Charlie reasons, if he has such an important job.) As usual, Charlie’s schemes lead to one near-disaster after another.

But moving away from his friends turns out to be the least of Hector’s problems. Three mean boys have targeted him for bullying and are making his life miserable. Hector wants to solve the problem by himself, but Charlie and Tommy see that he needs help. They start a campaign to save Hector and to defeat “The Jerzollies of Darkness.”

“Narrated in a balance of warmhearted insight and wacky naiveté, Charlie’s life will resonate with readers trying to navigate the simple but realistic perils of elementary school. Making friends, getting along with siblings, avoiding trouble at school—these situations matter to young readers, and Harley captures these emotions with a light and humorous touch.” —Kirkus Reviews

Check out the whole Charlie Bumpers series here, and don’t miss the free, downloadable series poster! Read an excerpt of Charlie Bumpers vs. the End of the Year and hear Bill Harley’s song for the last book of the series. There also a teacher’s guide available (for this book and all the rest of the books in the series).

Sign Charlie Bumpers’ yearbook! If you’re a fan of Charlie Bumpers and want to share your favorite moments with Bill Harley’s fun and wacky books, comment below with your “good-bye.” We’ll be sharing everyone’s good-bye messages to Charlie as we reflect on the end of this wonderful series.

Get your copy of Charlie Bumpers vs. the End of the Year on Amazon or at your local library, indie bookstore, or Barnes & Noble!

Career week is coming up for Mrs. Burke’s fourth grade class, and when his classmates brag about their own parents’ jobs, Charlie’s mouth gets ahead of him. Before he knows it, Charlie’s class thinks his dad will not only bring free calculators for everyone for Career Week, but that he is also president of the whole company! The downside? Charlie hasn’t even asked his father about coming in for Career Week. And to make matters worse, just before the big event Charlie’s dad loses his job. How will Charlie get out of this one?

Featuring endearing characters and relatable situations, this fun Parents’ Choice Recommended series illuminates the importance of learning to live together as a family as well as making the best of a bad situation.

For more Charlie Bumpers, you can watch the trailer, download the series poster, or check out the Teacher’s Guide. You can also enter to win one of five copies of Charlie Bumpers vs. His Big Blabby Mouth, with the audiobook included, if you retweet the back-to-school Charlie Bumpers polls on our Twitter!*

Don’t miss out on this new story, released this September. You can find Charlie and his antics at your local library, indie bookstore, or Barnes & Noble!

Charlie and his friends Tommy and Hector are ready to rule the soccer season. Their team, the Pirates, will surely score a million goals (or at least fifty). But when they’re placed on a team of amateurs, Charlie and his friends realize this season is not going to go the way they expected.

For one thing, their new coach doesn’t believe in star players and expects everyone to learn all the positions, never giving the dynamic trio a chance to perform together. Even though supposedly no one keeps score in this league, the first few games are a big disappointment to Charlie. To make matters worse, his big brother Matt has joined a video club and is recording every one of the Pirates’ disastrous plays.

If they can’t be on a winning team, Charlie thinks, then maybe he, Tommy, and Hector can at least win the prize for selling the most candy bars for the fundraiser by pulling their resources and selling together. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Fast-paced and family friendly, Charlie Bumpers vs. The Puny Pirates is a fantastic choice for young readers looking for an exciting book and a great series! (And check out the teacher’s guide for more materials.)

As a special Halloween treat, we’re giving you, our wonderful readers (and the rest of the internet, I suppose…), a super-exclusive (and by that, I mean: open to the entire computer-literate world) insider’s look at recording an audiobook!

Bill Harley is a two-time Grammy award-winning storyteller and the author of the Charlie Bumpers series. It only makes sense that he’d record his own audiobook.

So a few months back, armed with copies of The Squeaking Skull, lots of coffee, and our video camera, a couple of us from Peachtree headed to the ListenUp Audiobooks recording studio here in Atlanta.

In a dark room with orange padded walls, we (plus our awesome sound tech, Dante) carefully followed along, watching for mistakes, as Bill brought his characters to life.

This was one of the coolest things I’ve seen in book world, and I thought you might like to see what goes into recording an audiobook too. So here you go!

Matt Bumpers here with a Public Service Announcement.

Dorkychickenitis Patient Zero: Charles Bumpers

Me, Matthew Bumpers, demonstrating Tip #1

Can you think of anything else?  Comment below if I missed any good tips.

It may seem like spinning a spooky yarn ought to be easy as pumpkin pie, but, like tight rope walking, writing a children’s book (Am I right, guys?), and drinking black coffee, telling a scary story is a skill that must be honed with years of careful study.

But, since Halloween is just a few days away, consider this Scary Story Bootcamp.

(via duplexproductionblog.com)

Props: 

The only true necessity is a flashlight. Shine it under your face in the dark and give your audience a ghoulish grin. Works every time.

Other props might be things like a scary mask, a storyteller’s costume (cape? tophat? pipe?), maybe some fake snakes or bugs, or spooky music to play in the background.

Setting: 

You might think the setting in which you tell your creepy tale story isn’t important. Wrong. Atmosphere is vital. Here are some tips on working your audience into maximum fright before you even open your mouth.

• Indoors:
  • Make a blanket or pillow-fort. First off, they’re awesome. Second, they’ll hide all the light from outside the fort, leaving your flashlight as the only source of light. And third, forts are awesome.
• Outdoors:
  • Do you have an outdoor fire pit? The eerie light will flicker; the fire will crackle; and creatures of the night will skulk and slither in the shadows just out of sight…

(via stellarfour.com)

(via nypost.com)

• Tommy Knockers
• You Can’t Get Out

Moderately Scary:

• Bloody Mary
• The Headless Horseman
• Yellow Ribbon

(via marydoodles.deviantart.com)

Super Scary/Proceed with Caution:

• Girl in White
• Hairy Toe
• No Trespassing

The Best Original Scary Story Ever:

• The Long Fingered Man

Okay, that last one might be biased, but it is a great spooky story and you can read it (or hear it!) yourself in Bill Harley’s third Charlie Bumpers book, Charlie Bumpers vs. the Squeaking Skull!

Did we miss any of your favorite stories? Have you made up an awesome one that you’d like to share? Do you have any more tips on how to tell them? Leave a comment below!

 

Meet Charlie’s spookiest nemesis yet in CHARLIE BUMPERS VS. THE SQUEAKING SKULL, the third laugh-out-loud audiobook in the Charlie Bumpers series, read by Grammy award-winning storyteller, Bill Harley.

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To make matters worse, his dad has assigned chores to all the kids in the family and Charlie’s job is walking Ginger – the diggiest, sniffiest, and poopiest dog in the universe. Can Charlie deal with these challenges without causing havoc all around him?