Anyone have a ton of display space at their library and constantly looking for display ideas? *raises hand*
Having a lot of display space is a blessing and a curse. It’s a great chance to make the children’s area an inviting, exciting spot to stay and play. Sometimes you can make the display interactive or informative. But it’s also a lot of work, especially if design is not your strong suit. I have two giant corkboards above the picture book area in my library. Once the Summer Reading Club ended and I had to take down all the kids’ nametags, I knew I needed to think up something for the fall. After browsing Pinterest for display ideas, I found something that would be perfect: a guess who game using character silhouettes.
I searched and searched and searched but couldn’t find anyone who’s done this type of display and had any sort of file to share. You know, something someone else could print and go. I learned that most people make these silhouettes using a die cut machine (i.e. a Cricut) or by tracing the outline of a character onto black paper after projecting it onto a wall. I don’t have a die cut machine and the latter seemed too time consuming. So I made my own files!
I stuck with book characters, but you could easily branch into popular characters from other children’s media. Once I found a PNG image of the character, I copied it into PowerPoint and then changed the brightness level to -%100. That creates the silhouette. I then copied that image into a Word document which had been set to 11 x 17. That way I could make the image as large as possible. You’ll notice in the files that some of the images have blurry edges. Never fear! Just cut off the blurry edge when you are cutting out each picture and kids will never know.
Here are the files for anyone wanting them! I had to split them into a few different parts.
The first two files have the actual silhouettes. Those you can cut out and adhere to any display board. Some of them are tricky to cut – Fancy Nancy will take some scissor skills! The third file is the answer sheet I printed, glued to a piece of red paper, folded in half, and put on the bottom left of the first board. You can kind of see it in the picture above. It says, “Answers” on the top. That way kids and caregivers can check their answers on their own.
If anyone has any other display ideas that work for large areas, please let me know in the comments! I’m especially interested in interactive displays or displays that serve a purpose such as reader’s advisory. If you try this one out, I’d love to know how it goes.
I am definitely going to copy this. It will fit perfectly on the top of my shelves. Thanks so much for sharing!
Awesome! You are so welcome 🙂
Thank you for sharing these! I used them for a shadow puppet theater program and the kids loved making stories with their favorite characters. Luckily, the laminating kept them in pretty good condition, so now they can be used for a display like you intended 🙂
Oh what a great idea! I love finding different ways to use the same thing – thank you so much for sharing!
you rock!
One of our library interns just finished this at our library! Thank you for the idea!
Yay, love to hear that others are doing it too!
Put this up yesterday and the students are LOVING it. So much so that a 4th grader came up to me and asked if I would add Roz from The Wild Robot to the display.
Awesome! I love incorporating the kids’ suggestions too. That’s a tough one – I probably wouldn’t be able to guess it!
Thanks so much for sharing! I am making a smaller version of this to use as a game at an upcoming community fair.
Awesome! That sounds like a great way to get families exploring. So happy to help 🙂
Thanks so much for these templates! I will definitely be using them 🙂 thanks so much. What a great idea!!
In my library and not for commercial purposes of course. Am I allowed to use them in my library? 🙂
Yes! For library purposes it’s fine to use them. Enjoy 🙂
Thanks so much!!!! 🙂 these will be great to display in my library.
The elementary librarian I volunteer with and I are going to use them in the library windows at the beginning of the year. This is the newest elementary school in our district with children from several different schools. We thought this could generate great discussions for meeting the students and finding out who their favorite book characters are.
Great idea! You could add new ones too based on what they say.
I turned them into a “quiz” for my Google Classroom!
thank you!
So creative!
This what I want to do, but I’m not sure how
This is such a great idea.
Thank you for your generosity in sharing.
Hi! Is there anyway you can send this to me in a jpeg file? Thank you so much.
Hi Emily, I have limited file storage on my computer right now, so I would recommend searching on Google for a free PDF to JPEG converter. There are lots of them out there. You simply upload the pdfs and it changes the file format for you. It’s just pictures of book characters so I wouldn’t be worried about the sites have any personal or private information. Here’s one to try: https://pdf2jpg.net/
Thanks Lindsey! This is a great idea. I am representing the library at our Winter Farmer’s Market at the local mall this weekend, and I’m taking this with as an activity.
I used to do storytime in a mall and whoo boy that was interesting! Hopefully the scavenger hunt works out as people can do it at their own pace. Best of luck!