How to Eat Fried Worms at Maple Hills

School Age Care site manager Chris Valeri recently showed Maple Hill students what it means to bring a book to life.

As his students made their way through How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell, a question came up: Would you ever eat a live worm? Not even for an iPod or a million dollars, students said.

Valeri, however, has more gastrointestinal fortitude-at least when it's for a worthy cause. He made a promise to the students: If they concentrated through the end of the book and made literacy a priority, he would eat a real, wiggly, juicy worm.

Just like in the pages of How to Eat Fried Worms, the children thought up and suggested cooking methods for the much-anticipated worm eating. When they finished the book, Valeri let them vote for the recipe du jour. The winning concoction-a hamburger topped with olives, cream cheese, and Swiss cheese-was a combination of students' ideas.

The day before, students sorted through a tub of bait worms to find just the right one. The determining factors were length, plumpness, and mobility. On the day of the event, the school's chef washed the worm and artistically plated it next to the burger (or at least tried, as the worm slithered its way right off the plate's edge several times).

To chants of "Eat the worm! Eat the worm!" Valeri donned his apron, rolled up his sleeves … and … took … a bite! The crowd went wild! To outdo himself, he pulled the worm from the burger and finished it a la carte.

Now, the children are on to Mossflower by Brian Jacques, a book about mice. "Don't get any ideas about me eating rodents," Valeri told them.