A look at an interesting book club and how they do what they do.
Your club’s name: The Mother-Son Book Club. We never came up with a fancy name.
Location: Ashland, Oregon.
How long you’ve been around: We started it in August 2013.
How many members: There are eight of us: four moms and four sons.
Book you’re currently reading: Maniac McGee by Jerry Spinelli.
Book you last read: Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library by Chris Grabenstein.
Book that’s up next: The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare.
Since your inception, the book that has generated the strongest (good, bad, or otherwise) reaction: I think our favorite book was The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. The boys loved it. The moms loved it. It generated a lot of conversation about animal abuse, human cruelty, art, language, and the importance to fight for what you believe is right even if it’s not the way other people are doing things. I still cry thinking about that book. And the boys loved it so much that they convinced their teacher, who had never heard of it before, to read it aloud to the whole class!
The
secret to your club’s success: We meet once a month
and rotate houses. If anyone isn’t feeling up to cleaning up their house, we
are happy to meet at a café. I think the secret to success is not expecting
anyone to sit still for too long — these are 4th-grade boys — and to appreciate
any discussion we have as the right discussion for the book we’ve read.
(Answers provided by club member Jennifer Margulis.)
Should your club’s name be in lights? Leave a comment below or send an email to [email protected] and tell us about it!
