Given the last time I wrote a childhood book drinking games post it was 2016, I feel I need to stress again to be a responsible adult and wait til the children in your care are asleep before you get the books out and prepare to par-tay!
Any of the Charlie and Lola books (Lauren Child)
- Drink anytime Lola has a whinge or is a bit of a pain in the ass
- Drink whenever a real picture is used within the illustrations or when the font is put in bold for emphasis
- Drink if at any point you start to wonder where Charlie and Lola’s parents are at
- Drink if there’s an overall lesson about sharing
- Drink any time these words are utilised: extremely, absolutely, actually
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Judith Viorst)
- Drink anytime something shitty happens to Alexander
- Drink if he threatens to move to Timbuktu
- Drink whenever Alexander says it’s a ‘terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day’
- Drink whenever the characters are wearing an outfit that’s quite seventies
Come Back, Amelia Bedelia (Peggy Parish)
- Drink anytime Amelia fucks up
- Drink if the exact way she fucks up is somehow a pun
- Drink if her job search in this book gets you reminiscing about your own periods of unemployment and you start to feel sorry for Amelia
- Drink every time she gets hired for a job she’d probably need to have proper training for – that’s why she keeps screwing things up! This isn’t all on her!!!
Any of the Maisy Mouse books (Lucy Cousins)
- Drink anytime Maisy is referred to in the third person
- Drink if Charlie and Talluhlah also rock up
- Drink if at any point you start to wonder how old Maisy is meant to be; given that in some stories she’s in the city alone or using the oven unsupervised yet in others she’s playing doctors and her bedtime’s 7.30pm
- Drink anytime she brushes her teeth or there’s an actual illustration of her sitting on the John (there’s more than one)
The Velvelteen Rabbit (Margery Williams)
- Drink anytime the Velvelteen Rabbit stresses that he’s real a rabbit
- Drink if you start to wonder why the other toys are being so shitty about the fact that he’s not a real rabbit – you’re not real either!!!!
- Drink to ease the pain when things start to get real and the kid suddenly has scarlet fever
Goodnight Moon (Margaret Wise Brown)
- Drink if there’s a rhyme
- Drink if the red balloon that appears gets you thinking about IT
- Drink anytime an animals mentioned
- Drink whenever you think ‘a bowl full of mush’ doesn’t sound particularly appetizing
- Drink whenever the word ‘goodnight’ is said (yeah this is a pretty harsh rule. You probably will need your stomach pumped)
