by Senior Reviewer Maytal Wichman
Children’s lives nowadays are engulfed by media: television, computers, hand-held games, you name it. It’s nice to carve some time aside to play board games that involve human interaction and if there’s an added bonus of getting kids excited about reading – all the better!
Dolly’s Bookworm is a fun board game that gets kids away from the TV by teaching them about classic books, thus encouraging them to read.
Dolly’s Bookworm, which was invented by an eleven-year-old girl, is very easy to play – it’s for kids age 3 and up, and adults can play it, too. The goal is to find the bookworm that’s hidden in one of the 30+ books in the “library”. The game, for 2-4 players, goes as follows: one player is the librarian and secretly places the bookworm in one of the books. The other players (called “guessers”) have to guess by elimination which book it is by asking “yes” or “no” questions.
In the picture below is the “library” with “books”. Each “book” has two sides, one with the symbol of an acorn, which means it’s about a book for young kids. The other side – a tree for older kids. 
The librarian puts the bookworm in one of the books (it sticks with velcro).
The guessers eliminate some books by asking questions such as “is the book yellow?” If the answer is “no”, the guessers can take out all of the yellow books. The guessers can also ask “is the book about a boy, a girl, an animal? is there magic in the book?” On the outside there are symbols for boy, girl, a paw for animal and a magic wand for magic, so you know if the book has it or not even if you’ve never read it.
School-aged kids may have already read some of the books – at least the ones with the acorn, so if they’re the librarian they can be asked questions such as “have you read the book?” or even more specific questions about it. As your kids get older and read more they’ll be able to ask more detailed questions about the books.
My kids love playing this! Once they find the book with the bookworm I encourage the one who found it to read out loud what the book is about. If I am with them when they play and I happen to know the book I give them a more detailed description. This way my kids – especially my 8 year old – can learn more about the book to see if she wants to get it from the library.
You can turn this game into a game for high schoolers and even older if you limit the questions to only ones about what the book is about, or questions about the author.
Click here to learn more about Dolly’s Bookworm and here to purchase it.
I was not compensated for this post. I received a sample.
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Senior Reviewer Maytal Wichman is the owner of Mama’s Bites and has also written for The Huffington Post. She has been living in New York City for fourteen years and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature as well as a Law Degree, but blogging is her true passion. Maytal is a stay-at-home mom to three kids (ages 8, 6 and 2) and loves finding great products that make her family’s life easier.
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