My daughter is turning four. Our theme is welcome to the world of books.  It will be in our apartment community center.  We have to be inventive for games and such because my husband and I are students and money is tight. The invitation is an open book with a globe inside that I made on the computer.  We will decorate with themes from the stories we read and hang our inflatable globe from the ceiling.  We will have activities related to all their favorite books. Every kid will get a passport, and at each book activity, they get a stamp in their passport.  For the Owl and the Pussycat, we will set up our inflatable raft and pretend to be in a boat at sea. We will give each of the kids a goldfish here. We also have some singing dolphins (a toy) that we will put in a container of water and let the kids make music with. For Where's that mouse we will have a treasure hunt for some paper mouse hand puppets. They will find where the mouse is on the page of the book and then there will be some mice in a similar place of the community center for each page. By the end of the story, they will have found a mouse for everyone.  For Teddy Bear's Picnic we will have a picnic and the cake.  I will make a bear shaped cake. Two round pans for the body and head and cupcakes for ears. I will decorate graham crackers with frosting to look like books, the bear will be reading the books. We will  decorate the eating area with teddy bears.  I will make lace-up teddy bear cards with a teddy silhouette and a paper punch and have them laminated(an idea I found on this site.) I will tape the ends of the yarn for the string. Also the kids can decorate their own masks to be teddy bears. I will use paper bags and cut them short, turn them inside out, and glue ears on them in advance, but older kids could do this themselves.  The kids will just glue on bows, hats, earrings, etc. I think decorative stichers could be earrings. Then we have printed felt masks to tell the stories of The Gingerbread Man and/or Billy Goats Gruff. The kids can wear them and act it out while we tell the story. Then we will help them decorate Gingerbread men. For You Are Special, we will play stick the dot on Punchinello(the main character, then read the story. And then we will take the dots off Punchinello, since the point of the story is that Punchinello loses his dots.  The winners (everyone since they are so little still) will get prizes here. Stickers, pencils, and other good stuff. We will read a book about Penguins and then the kids will reach into a bucket of ice water to get a ziploc bag of goodies instead of doing a piñata. I will put a bag in for each kid.  That way, everyone gets the same thing and there is no fighting or crying. For the book The Chicken Sisters, we will get some baby chicks (borrow them from a friend) for the kids to see and pet gently, with supervision.  Then, since the story has people wearing costumes in it, we will play dress-up. It seems like a lot of games, but some of the stories are very short and I know that no game will last too long with young kids. I am excited to have this party. This is something anyone could do with their own favorite books. Just come up with activities that match the theme of the stories.