Book clubs galore!

Last year, with a friend, I formed a book club for some of the girls in our hs group. Ben already belonged to a group that had been started by another mom that turned out to be all boys (although it hadn't been billed as that from the start -just turned out that way). We decided that we wanted something for the girls also, so we got one going. I turned out to be a good thing, although the girls were often a bit quieter and more shy about sharing their opinions on the books than I would have liked. This year we realized we had so many younger girls who potentially wanted to join and this would make the group really too big, so we thought we would try dividing into a younger group and an older group. We've done this, figured out all of the logistics, and chosen the first book (today at an informal meeting at our house). There is also a younger boys group forming this fall as well, so for our little local hs group we have four book clubs, two for boys and two for girls. We all meet on the same day at the same time in a wonderful hs facility in the area which offers space for this kind of thing. We may also be adding an informal "storytime" group for the younger siblings of all of these book club members (the 3-6 yo group) and a "book swap" system for the moms. How fantastic is that? All of these kids (and moms) getting together to read, share book findings, discuss books, etc. One of the greatest things about this (in my mind) is that the kids end up reading books that they normally wouldn't pick up on their own. And since mine tend to be in-a-rut types of readers, this is a huge help to me. They've even liked most of the books they read over the past year with their book clubs. The way both groups are set up, each child is assigned a month to choose a book for the group to read and to act as host for the meeting (provide snacks and lead the discussion with the help of a parent if needed). For next month, Madeline's group (she's in the older group by just a hair, it's for 9 and up and she turns 9 in Sept.) is reading Granny Torrelli Makes Soup by Sharon Creech. Ben's group will be reading Redwall by Brian Jacques. Ben is not at all thrilled about this one. He resisted reading it for many years but recently tried it because a friend loves the series and talked him into it. He put it down after a bit, just not at all interested in the storyline or characters. Now he is dreading reading it for book club, but knows that if he wants to participate he needs to read it or at least give most of it a very good try. It's good for him, I think, to have to read something outside his comfort zone and even not good in his eyes and then to have to come up with the concrete reasons why he didn't like it. He'll do fine in the end, I think. And I think we're all looking forward to continuing with this great activity!