One of the highlights of my summer was hearing from Conni Su Siminski about this summer book club. Talk about sharing bookjoy! Yea to Conni Su, the moms and the girls! Hope others will send us your bookjoy sharing ideas. Pat

(More about the summer book club from Connie Su . . .)

The Summer Book Club with about 10 girls from Monte Vista Elementary School in La Crescenta, CA, met weekly for 6 weeks. Pat’s book was the kick off and the best book to do that as it had all these great foods to taste and haiku to read plus lots of additional educational facts and tips. The girls went around the table and took turns reading everything on the page…the facts and the haiku. The girls learned so much and had a ball. There was lots of interaction and discussion encouraged and Moms (or Grandmother as in my case) were present and could contribute as well. Photos were taken at each meeting to be displayed and used to make a craft at the end to take home. It was a multicultural group of girls and the club covered different genres: Haiku the first week, then poetry the next week with Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends. Each girl read her favorite from the book along with other classic poems. Another week it was a nonfiction book, What To Do About Alice, which was about Alice Roosevelt with a feminist bent . One week the girls had a tea party complete with gloves and hats and tea sandwiches while reading, The English Roses by Madonna. One week the girls met at the local Barnes and Noble for their meeting and another at the beautiful downtown Los Angeles public library. The last meeting discussed the book Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo, which the girls read during the week. Afterwards, they watched the movie of it while the moms got a BBQ together and all the girls’ families came and had dinner together. It was a feast and a glorious way to end the summer book club. All in all the entire 6 weeks had an air of excitement and festivities and fun!

Starting a book club. . .

For moms looking to start a book club, here’s another idea. A club at our school is headed by a mom who has it in her home each month. It is a Mother/Daughter Book Club and this year the moms will select the books beginning with Frindle by Andrew Clements. The club meets each month for about 1 1/2 hours with healthy snacks and beverage at the end. Moms read the books with the girls during the month so everyone can help in discussion. Each girl draws a paper from a hat naming a role they will have to help expedite the discussion. The roles are: Discussion Director leads the group to talk about the book by asking inspiring questions; Problem Prober finds the problem in the story and how it is solved; Theme Teller discusses the theme and sub-themes and the overall ‘big idea’ of the book; Connecting Captain connects between the book and the world experiences around them or what it reminds them of in their own life or another book; Character Captor analyzes the main characters in the story and talks about their qualities; Setting Specialist reports on the setting of the story and how that affects the story; Word Wizard looks closely at the special words the author chose to use in the story like funny words, long words, descriptive words, etc.; Passage Picker picks an interesting passage from the story to share and tells how the story is made more powerful by that passage; Artful Artist makes something to creatively represent an important part of the story which could be a drawing, map, costume, props and the groups guesses which part of the story is represented. A great side benefit for the above group was learning all the parts of a good story in a fun way. Both of the book clubs function differently but enhance the love of reading, camaraderie of the girls and the moms, and makes reading and discussion fun! Nothing could be better!