I Survived The Attack of the Grizzlies, 1967

 I feel like it's becoming a habit that I accidentally give away all my copies of a book we're reading and then end up walking into book club never having gotten my hands on another copy!

For discussion, activity/craft and snack ideas, I rely heavily on the book for guidance and inspiration. But with these grizzlies, I was flying blind.

One thing that I tell the kids who come up to the desk and ask about our book club is that if you can't get the book to read in time, just read about the event! You'll still have something to share in our discussion and you will still have an idea of the what the book will be based on.

This book however, apparently didn't have much to do with the two girls who were attacked and killed on the night of August 12, 1967.

DISCUSSION
After the group shared their favorite/ least favorite parts from the story, I shared the actual events of that night. Boy was I glad I'd printed off my notes!!

What struck me about this story is the coincidences and chance that came into play that night... In 57 years of Glacier Park history, there had been virtually no issues with bear attacks.

One of my favorite quotes in my research was a from a park ranger stating that, "If you set up a danger index ranging from zero to ten, where the butterfly is zero and the rattlesnake is ten, the grizzlies of Glacier Park would have to rate somewhere between zero and one."

Like I Survived The Shark Attack of  1916, this book does have specific, real-life individuals who were killed.

I printed off their pictures to pass around and we talked briefly about each girl: Julie Helgeson and Michele Koons.

Click here for a copy of the pictures of Julie Helgeson and Michele Koons

Other discussion topics included... 

• How Glacier National Park desensitized interaction between bears and humans
• How parks have changed to become safer for visitors and wildlife
• Bear facts including food, size and habits
• Interacting with wildlife and what to do in a bear attack

SNACKS

Providing the snack that's mentioned in the book is one of my favorite elements of book club! I feel like it helps bring the to life and the kids have caught on to it, so when I didn't have Bugles, they questioned me.

(Bugles are apparently in the book)

As seen in the main picture, we had Teddy Grahams and berry Fruit Snacks. These were wrapped in pictures of Grizzly Bears.

Another idea was gummy bears.


ACTIVITY
There were a few ideas I was playing around with to tie-in with the 1967 event...

• Picking up trash around the library (since that's what was attracting the bears to campsites and such)
• A bear hunt (Park Rangers went out hunting the bears after the attacks) 
• Bear craft (Pinterest is riddled with adorable crafts)
• Some kind of edible bear snack. One thing in particular that I would love to do (but could never get permission for) is making smores with a candle flame. My mom and I used to do this all the time at home, growing up.

What we ended up doing was a relay race to collect food for bears. Participants were divided into teams and given "bear claws" to collect their food and carry back to their "den"

This relay game will get its own post, so sit tight while I get that situated! It'll be up in the next few weeks.

💚💛💜