Presentation & Craft ideas

Hi bloggers,

I need to ask your help and get your brains working. (image from Google)

I work in a library as many of you probably know by now, I look after the Teen/YA section, do displays and organize the stock that comes in. I run a Teenage Book group that meets once a month and get them talking about books, doing crafts and playing games. But my boss has now asked me to 'spread and share my growing knowledge of YA fiction.'

I have been asked to do a presentation to a group of 12-14 year olds about all things books, but I'm struggling to find a structure that I could talk about and ideas. 

The things I definitely want to include are:

• trends in fiction, 
• book cover art - what appeals, what doesn't -are there any similarities through trends etc.
• how they choose books - what appeals to them and why
• How can they find out about new books - including touching on blogs, amazon, goodreads etc

That's all I can think of so far, but I want it to be exciting and different, really get them enthused about books. And though I have the subject bases above, how do you think is the best way to present them?

Any ideas, hints, tips etc would be very welcome.

My next ask is that over the next month we have 2 craft/activity sessions coming up. Each session lasts for an hour. This includes reading one or 2 stories and then the crafts and activities. The children that show up are usually quite young, around 1 - 5 years old. So crafts have to be very basic.

The first event is 'Rainbow Fish' by Marcus Pfister - link takes you to Amazon so you can see what the book is about.

so far we have 

• a Paper Plate Fish - 

(image taken from Google) These are simple to make and look effective.

we want it to be general sort of 'Under The Sea' themed so including star-fish, octopus, dolphins etc if possible, but the have to be really simple. And offer a difference, they can't all just be 'colour in' or 'decorate'

Again any ideas are welcome

Our next event I am struggling with the most. We are holding a 'Harry Potter' event. When I heard about this I was so excited, but all the things I had thought of would be more suitable for older children, most of these 5 and under's probably have never read the books and so we need simple, simple, simple.

I was going to make a big cut out of a hippogriff or similar for them to collage, then we can put it on the wall for a display.

Then we thought about cauldron decorating, or wand making or wizard/witch hat making (paper hats). But I want something really exciting.

For a dragons and heroes event last year I did a 'virtual tour' round the library. They made swords and shields and then had to climb over beanbags (which represented rocks) then swim between the shelves (obviously no real water involved but they had to imagine it was a river,) and so on until they reached the dragon's lair where they had to find it's secret treasure and escape. This worked really well, they all got really involved and the child that found the treasure got to keep it (chocolate coins). I would like to do something similar but it obviously has to be based on Harry Potter and i'm struggling to make the 'script'/'path' they could trace.

Again any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I am in desperate need of inspiration. 

Thanks to everyone in advance.