Day 10 of PiBoIdMo (Picture Book Idea Month) brought a great idea from Diana Murray to try a mash up of ideas to create fresh new picture books.  To add structure to this inspiration, I decided to create the Birthday Mash Up Match Up Game!  

How to Play: 
MASH 'EM!
By Miguel Saavedra
There are two lists below.  Find your birth month in the first listing and grab the corresponding classic golden book.   Find your birth day from the second listing and grab the corresponding movie.  Then select any elements of the stories - characters, plot, key word in title, etc. -  and mash 'em together.  The idea could be for a picture book or for whatever genre you prefer.  

For example, my birthday is December 5.  So I mashed up The Saggy Baggy Elephant and Titanic.  (Oh crapplesauce, how in the world am I going to do that?)   Okay, okay...here goes.

S.B. Elephant is the biggest elephant in the plains.  In fact he is the biggest elephant of all time!  No one and nothing can stop S.B. - until he steps on a teeny tiny needle and has the biggest pain in the plain.  How could something so small stop something so big?

Your turn!  Please share the pitch of your story in the comments so we can all be inspired!

Classic Golden Books (The Month)
1  The Monster at the End of the Book
2  The Little Engine Who Could
3 The Poky Little Puppy
4 The Little Red Hen
5 Scuffy the Tugboat
6 The Little Red Caboose
7 Lasso the Moon
8  Tawny Scrawny Lion
9 The Shy Little Kitten
10 The Sailor Dog
11 The Fire Engine Book
12 The Saggy Baggy Elephant

The Top 25 All Time Grossing Films Adjusted for Inflation (The Day)
1    Gone with the Wind      
2    Star Wars
3    The Sound of Music
4    E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
5    Titanic  
6    The Ten Commandments
7    Jaws     
8    Doctor Zhivago 
9    The Exorcist
10  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs         
11  101 Dalmatians 
12  The Empire Strikes Back
13  Ben-Hur
14  Avatar  
15  Return of the Jedi
16  Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace      
17  The Sting
18  The Lion King
19  Raiders of the Lost Ark 
20  Jurassic Park      
21  The Graduate   
22  Fantasia              
23  The Godfather 
24  Forrest Gump   
25  Mary Poppins   
26  Grease
27  Marvel's The Avengers 
28  Thunderball       
29  The Dark Knight               
30  The Jungle Book
31  Sleeping Beauty

Please let someone with a June 9th birthday join the fun so we can see what the Little Red Caboose needs to exorcise.  Or a March 29th Dark Knight meets Little Poky Puppy - Mwahahaha!

***Thanks Laura Sassi for sharing this post - it made the front cover of Opening a Can of Bookworms Daily**