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The second edition of the Mother-daughter book club newsletter will be on the way in just a few days. There’s still time to sign up and receive the latest issue.

This month I’ll be featuring a review of Frank Cottrell Boyce’s new book Cosmic, and The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson. There’s also an interview with Heather Vogel Frederick, author of The Mother-Daughter Book Club, and a profile a the book club I’m in with my youngest daughter, Catherine.

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The Curse of Addy McMahon

Be sure you have plenty of time when you pick up The Curse of Addy McMahon by Katie Davis—you might not be able to stop turning pages to see what happens next. On the other hand, Davis’s clever use of graphic illustrations interspersed in the narrative provide clean breaks if you just have to put the book down now and then.

Mother-daughter book clubs with girls in 6th to 9th grade will find a lot to like here. Addy is convinced she suffers from a family curse, rendered against her great-grandad in Ireland by fairies. And she’s got mounting evidence to suggest she might be right. Her mom’s boyfriend is moving into the guest room “temporarily,” her worst enemy saw her shopping for a training bra, and her best friend, Jackie, is mad at her because she accidentally emailed a copy of a nasty fake interview with Jackie that got all around school.

But Addy does have a lot going for her. She helped create a school newspaper and she’s on the editorial staff. She interviews interesting people and creates graphic drawings to illustrate the stories she writes. People love her interviews, and they let her know it.  I found myself wishing I had experienced that kind of good luck when I was in middle school.

The illustrations punctuating the narrative should make The Curse of Addy McMahon attractive to reluctant readers as well as those who devour books. The presentation is unconventional, and so is some of the narrative. It was quite interesting to read Addy’s thoughts about her father, who died from cancer he got from smoking. And the subject of parents entering the dating/relationship world after the death of a spouse is also very thoughtfully written.

Here’s an activity idea to go with the book: have girls and moms both draw their own autobiograstrips like Addy’s. Share them at a meeting and see what discussion ensues.

Shakespeare’s Birthday

Tomorrow, April 23, is considered the officially recognized birthday of William Shakespeare. My daughter, Madeleine, loves to watch his plays as well as act in them when she gets a chance to do that at school. I’ve always been surprised at and a little bit in awe of her early love of Shakespeare. My own theory is that she was exposed to his works when she was young, at a time when a lot of what adults said didn’t make sense to her. So she learned to appreciate the overall story without focusing so much on understanding every single word that was spoken.

I wish I could say the same is true for me. The first Shakespeare play I saw was Midsummer Night’s Dream. I was in high school and my class traveled to see the production at a local university. That play is certainly one of the most accessible of Shakespeare’s works, but I still struggle with it. And I read as much background as I can about a play before I attend any production so I’ll know the general story line.

We haven’t chosen Shakespeare for any of our mother-daughter book club meetings, but I think it would be great to read one of his plays and then attend a theater production together as a group. I’d love to hear from someone who has done this and how it went.

Happy 444th birthday William Shakespeare.

Add a Little Poetry to Your Meeting

In honor of National Poetry Month, which is coming up in April, I offer this recommendation for a mother-daughter book club meeting. Instead of everyone reading a book to discuss, you can designate a meeting dedicated to poetry

Everyone can choose their own poets to read, and here are some ideas for you to start with:

• Emily Dickinson - multiple collections of her poems, many of which are about flowers and nature
• Robert Louis Stevenson - who wrote A Child’s Garden of Verse, which was popular with both children and their parents when it came out.
• Shel Silverstein - best known for Where the Sidewalk Ends, but other collections are worth a read too.
• Jack Prelutsky - author of more than 50 poetry collections, including the laugh-out-loud It’s Raining Pigs and Noodles, and A Pizza the Size of the Sun.
• Alan Katz - a former writer for the Rosie O’Donnell Show, whose new collection is titled Oops!

You can also have everyone try their hand at writing a poem or two to read aloud at your next meeting. Any form will do: haiku, limericks, free verse, sonnets, tanka, odes…the list offers lots of flexibility.

One of the most interesting assignments I’ve ever had for book club was a poetry month. Everyone in the family got into it. My husband, two daughters and I made a trip to the library together and checked out different books of poetry. At dinner every night, we would each read aloud a poem from one of the books that had special appeal to us. Sometimes they were thoughtful, sometimes they were funny, but they all made us think about something differently.

And writing the poems wasn’t as difficult as we thought when we first got the assignment. In fact, it was probably more challenging for the adults than the kids, who get practice writing poetry in school. And it was a blast to read what we had written out loud at the meeting.

For more ideas, check out the Scholastic, Inc. Web site, which lists activities appropriate for different age groups.

The New York Stories of Edith Wharton

I recently received a review from a reader for The New York Stories of Edith Wharton, which is a collection of stories that Wharton wrote. Perhaps best known for her novel, The Age of Innocence, which was made into a movie with Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder in 1993, Wharton was also a landscape architect and interior designer. If you’d like to learn more about this fascinating woman, you can start with her Wikipedia bio.

Here’s an excerpt from the review sent in by Inez C. in Arizona, which suggests a great activity for a mother-daughter book club meting.

“Each story in this collection makes for a good “What would you do if you were any of these characters” discussion, and we decided to make one of our sessions extra special by accompanying it with a mother and daughter tea party. No jeans and sneakers were allowed at this one! We each dressed up for the reading and the daughters helped make the finger sandwiches. We bought the scones from a local bakery and had several different kinds of tea. To top things off, we even found an older lady who offered to come to our group and talk about rules of etiquette. This tied in well with our Edith Wharton readings because the people in the stories are quite polite and would be aghast to commit social faux pas! What gladdened us the most, though, was that the etiquette lesson made such an impression on our younger members that they each hand-wrote thank you letters to the woman who gave a talk on manners. We are hoping this stays with them through their adult lives, along with the memory of this quality literature and its author.”

To read the full review and other book reviews, visit MotherDaughterBookClub.com.

Newbery Club

 A librarian I know who leads a book club for kids at her school recently told me about a Newbery Club that several schools in the district participate in. Here’s what she had to say:

“There are over 10 schools where we collaborate and all lead Newbery Clubs. We love getting together as adults and discussing/reviewing books. We then bring them to the students who narrow down the selection and begin reading and also blogging between schools about the books. It is my favorite program I participate/manage.

“Their favorites this year were:

• The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart - fabulous mystery, long read but the kids loved it. Enjoyed the surprises.
• The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt - my favorite, laughed all the way through. Historical fiction. I was thrilled to see this win the Newbery Honor.
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick - impressive visual book, won the Caldecott recently.
• Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life by Wendy Mass - very interesting realistic fiction book, enjoyed the adventures and discussions that came from this one.
• Peak by Roland Smith - excellent adventure. The boys liked this one quite a bit, girls almost as much. This led to reading Into Thin Air which is a great biography.”

Thanks to Deborah Alvarez for the recommendations. This also sounds like a good way for mother-daughter book clubs to pick books. Particularly since there are so many titles to choose from. To check out what’s on the list, visit the American Library Association’s Newbery Medal Home Page.

Awesome Plays for Teens and Tweens

Here’s an interesting and fresh idea that was passed on recently from a mom who’s in a book club with girls ranging in age from 12 to 15.

“One of the girls (in her group) likes drama a lot and has been reading a playwright she likes and whose plays she’s been in. We thought it would be fun to buy an anthology of one-acts, assign parts to read out loud like a readers theater, and talk about the stories. Most of us have been to theater performances but weren’t familiar with what a play looks like on the page.

“The anthology we read is Awesome Plays for Teens and Tweens by Christina Hamlett, and we’re now completely hooked! This is a collection of 15 one-act comedies and each one is short enough that we could read several of them in each meeting. It was great fun to assign roles to one another, plus this experience was invaluable in terms of encouraging our daughters to speak clearly, enunciate, experiment with different accents…and not trample on each other’s lines! It was also a wonderful spotlight on our young actress in the group who led discussions afterwards about what it’s like to be in a play.

“The girls all loved “Lessons of Oz” which is a humorous take on what happens when Dorothy comes back and becomes a best selling author but her pals from Oz aren’t so happy with the gifts they received. With “Lessons of Oz” fresh in our heads now, we’re thinking of going as a group to see “Wicked” when it plays here. I recommend playreading to mother and daughter clubs who are looking for something fresh and fun to do and Awesome Plays for Teens and Tweens is a great introduction to the world of the theater.”

What an interesting idea to liven up a meeting and let both girls and moms try something new. If you’d like to read the full review from Inez of Arizona, here’s the link to MotherDaughterBookClub.com.

What’s Eating Gilbert Grape

My daughter and I hosted the meeting for her high-school mother daughter book club a few days ago. We only host once a year, and it’s always in January. We switched to a lighter schedule when all the girls entered high school and more activities started claiming their time. So we try to make the most of the one meeting at our house each year.

We opted for a book/movie combination of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape by Peter Hedges. It was a great choice. It was interesting to compare and contrast the two, since both the book and the screenplay were written by Hedges. Here are some of the points that came up during our discussion.

1. The movie is a lot more sympathetic to the characters than the book. The characters in the book are gritty and flawed and repulsive and totally engaging as well as entirely believable. Most of the characters in the movie are nicer, and the plot line is nicer to them. Particularly to mama and Ellen, the teenaged sister. The exception is Mrs. Carver, who seems more neglectful of her children in the movie than in the book.

2. The extra characters in the book help to round out the story. We missed the presence of Gilbert’s two older siblings, Melanie, the receptionist in Mr. Carver’s insurance office, and the never-seen-but-talked-about deceased second-grade teacher.

3. Becky seemed older in the movie, which both girls and moms saw as a plus. In the book she’s 16, and the girls especially thought it was “gross” that she wanted to be with a 24-year-old man. (What a relief!)

4. Both the book and the movie were wonderful for very different reasons. Some of us preferred the movie to the book, and some of us were just the opposite. But most of us liked them both.

The biggest problem I had was deciding what to serve, as the book’s descriptions of mama’s eating habits were not very appetizing. In the end I decided it didn’t really matter what I served. The book is all about food, and so I opted for spaghetti with meat sauce, bread with butter and green salad. Madeleine made chocolate chip cookies for dessert.

What’s Eating Gilbert Grape is charming to read and to watch, and I highly recommend it for high-school-aged readers and their moms.

Mom’s Night Out

Last night the moms from my daughter Catherine’s book club gathered for a night out of our own. One of the moms volunteered to host a movie night at her house, and we each brought something yummy for dessert to share, then settled in to watch the movie, Love Actually.

With all the busyness of the holidays and extra night-time events on the schedule, we had worried that this would seem like an obligation, a chore that we had to show up for. But it was just the opposite! I was excited about my girls’ night all day long, and when I arrived I felt the stress of the week lifting off my shoulders.

We drank tea and dessert wine and ate tasty desserts and cried and laughed during throughout the evening. When it was over we talked about all the different kinds of love and what we thought about the relationships we had just watched in the movie. We reveled in the fact that we were actually watching an R-rated movie, and it was definitely something we wouldn’t watch with our kids.

Next time we get together we talked about going out for a movie and ice cream. It’s not exactly living the wild life, but it’s lots of fun all the same. I highly recommend scheduling a grown-up night just for the moms at least once or twice a year.

Games Can Get Discussion Moving

A reader from Milwaukee, Wisconsin recently sent in a few ideas for games to play during a meeting. Here’s what she had to say:

“In addition to the discussion, some of our meetings ‘pit’ mothers against daughters in games quizzing us on the book - we’ve played Jeopardy, Deal or No Deal and others. It provides a little change to the agenda. We have a short game and then discuss the book.”

What great ideas to get lively discussions going. Sometimes the books my club members have liked the most have generated the least discussion, because we couldn’t think of anything to say beyond, “I really liked everything about this book.” Situations like this would really benefit from a game that brought out different aspects of the book that the group could then talk about.

Here are a few book recommendations from the group in Milwaukee for 7th - 8th graders:

Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pies by Jordan Sonnenblick
Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah
Pobby and Dingan by Ben Rice (short but impactful)