Book Clubs Inspire Writing as well as Reading

Today I’m guest posting at Sage Cohen’s blog, Writing the Life Poetic. In my post I talk about how mother-daughter book clubs are inspiration for writing as well as reading. Read the post, then check out the rest of Sage’s great blog.

 

Wanted: Mother-Daughter Book Club Pen Pals

Have you ever had a pen pal? Someone you connected with who lived far away and wrote letters to you about what her life was like? In today’s world where it’s so easy to connect technologically, it may seem old fashioned to have a pen pal. Yet, I believe there’s still plenty value in forming a relationship with someone you’ve never met before who lives in a different place than you do.

For one thing, when you send notes of your own to a pen pal, you’re really thinking about what it is about your day-to-day life that someone else may find interesting. For another, there’s something really fun about slowly getting to know someone as they send you notes about their lives. Whether you correspond the old-fashioned way by sending letters or connect electronically, getting meaningful mail can still put a smile on your face.

As a way to help mother-daughter book clubs members around the country (or in other parts of the world) connect with each other, I’m creating a pen pals exchange on Mother Daughter Book Club.com. In part I was inspired by Heather Vogel Frederick’s great new addition to her mother-daughter book club novels, Dear Pen Pal (review to come soon). I was also influenced by a mom in a book club who wrote in to ask if I knew of resources for their club members who were seeking pen pals.

If you’d like to be part of this exchange, here’s what I need from you. Please email me the number of mom/daughter pairs in your club and the age of the girls along with your hometown and state. Then tell me who will be the contact for your group (must be a mom). I will print your information on the pen pals page of my website, along with other clubs who are searching for pen pals.

I won’t match groups to one another, rather I’ll let you decide if a group matches what you’re looking for. I also won’t print email or contact information. The official contact for a group will let me know when she wants to connect to another group, and I’ll provide exchange information then. Once you’ve made a connection, just let me know and I’ll take you off the list.

Already there are three clubs who have sent in info for the pen pals page. Send my yours and I’ll add you to the list as well.

Q and A at The International Mom’s Blog

Judy Miller publishes a great blog for parents of children who were adopted from another country called The International Mom. She is also a columnist for the adoption network, Grown in My Heart.  Today she’s featuring a review of Book by Book along with the answers to a couple of questions she asked me. Read my blog post and check out Judy’s other blog posts at The International Mom.

Guest Blogging at Powell’s Today

I’ve written a guest post about mother-daughter book clubs at the Powell’s blog today. In it I talk about why I think it’s great to be in a mother-daughter book club and give a little information about how to get started. There are also a few book recommendations for clubs in different age groups. Here’s the link if you’d like to read the post.

Why Be in a Mother-Daughter Book Club Reason #3

In the last couple of days, I’ve been talking about reasons to be in a mother-daughter book club. Every week I hear from someone who is starting a club or has been in a club for a while. Every one talks about what they want to get from the the club they’re starting or what they find so special about being in a book club with a daughter. While each of those reasons is personal in its own way, each also falls under a broad category as well. Here’s a recap of the first two of those main reasons.

Being in a mother-daughter book club allows you to:

• Stay closer to your daughter as she grows
• Connect to the broader community around you

Today we’ll talk about the third main reason:

• Mother-daughter book clubs promote literacy in general.

A couple of years ago Scholastic released the results of a reading study that show children who read for fun are more likely to think of themselves as smart and good students who can succeed in school. Maybe not so surprising. But what is surprising, is that the number of kids who say they read for fun is really high only until about the age of eight. Beginning at nine, those numbers start to drop off, and they decline even more in middle school and high school.

Mother-daughter book clubscan counteract that trend, because they are a great way to keep your daughter reading for fun. Especially when you consider that nine (the age reading for fun begins to drop) is the “ideal age” if there is one to start a mother-daughter book club.

And it’s not just the reading that can benefit your daughter in school. It’s the talking too. When she discusses the books she has read with your group, she’s learning how to express her opinion and back it up. She gets to hone her speaking skills in a group, something that can really help her out when making presentations for research projects. Mother-daughter book clubs give her a safe environment where the pressure to perform may not feel like it has graded consequences.

Over the years I’ve watched as both of my daughters have become more confident at speaking up about issues to discuss in books we’ve read. I know of at least one mother-daughter book club that started because the moms wanted to encourage their daughters to speak up in class more. They had gotten feedback from teachers that their daughters’ school performance was being hurt by lack of participation in class discussion. These moms didn’t start until middle school, yet they felt their club really helped their daughters learn to speak out confidently. Now that’s a pretty large endorsement.

Why Be in a Mother-Daughter Book Club—Reason #2

Yesterday I talked about how being in a mother-daughter book club can help you and your daughter stay closer through the years. Today I’ll discuss how your book club can expand your ties to your community as well. How does that work?

When you ask other moms and daughters to join your club, you broaden your connections with the people around you. Maybe they come from your daughter’s school, or your church group, or a Girl Scout troop. Maybe they are friends that you don’t see often enough. Either way, when you forge a group, you start to create a support system for each other that will probably manifest itself in ways you can’t even imagine at first. But over the years you’ll probably find yourself turning to the other mothers in your club when you want to get someone’s else’s take on issues at school, or you need advice on finding a new dentist or pediatrician, or you need feedback on your disciplinary approach. Your book club moms have the potential to be your sounding board and your best resource.

Plus, your daughters have other adults who can be a resource when they need advice. Having them know there’s a whole circle of women ready to step in and help them out when they need is a great support for them as they grow. My daughter even got a recommendation from one of the moms in our book club when she was submitting an essay for a college scholarship a few months ago.

You can also spread out into the community at large. One way to do that is connect with a book expert to recommend books for your group. Who is a book expert? Maybe it’s your school librarian, or the youth librarian at your local branch of the public library. Maybe it’s your favorite bookseller. Establish a connection so your expert can get a feel for what works and doesn’t work with your group. Over time she can recommend new books for your or direct you to classics to check out.

When you expand the relationships you and your daughter have with the community around you, it can enrich your experience and help you form friendships that may last the rest of your life. That’s a pretty big benefit.

Why Be in a Mother-Daughter Book Club—Reason #1

Yesterday I talked about going into detail this week about the benefits of being in a mother-daughter book club. I wasn’t focused on these benefits when I started my own clubs eight and five years ago, but I definitely believe knowing them can convince others to start new mother-daughter book clubs. In my guidebook, Book by Book, I quote many moms in book clubs around the country and each has her own take about what she sees as being the most important reason she loves being in her book club. I found that many of these reasons can be grouped together in broader categories, and I’ve whittled those down to three. Today I’ll talk about the first one.

Reason #1 to be in a mother-daughter book club—It allows you to maintain a close relationship with your daughter. This is a big one, not only in importance, but in ways the benefits come out. When you spend time reading together, or reading separately but talking about the book before you attend book club, you carve out special time just for the two of you in your family. You say to your daughter, “Spending time with you is important to me, and I’m willing to get rid of all the distractions of daily life to focus on this right now.” You know what I mean about the distractions of daily life. Getting home from work, doing laundry, cooking dinner, driving to kids’ activities, keeping up with household paperwork. There is truly no end to the mundane tasks that can dominate a day and pull your attention away from true conversation.

I’m as guilty as anyone of only half listening sometimes as my daughters talk about their school days or homework or other things on their minds. And I know my daughters tune me out sometimes when I’m talking to them too. But I find that when we set aside time for our book, we both focus on each other. And that leads to conversation about issues that come up in the books. Which leads to conversations about issues they are dealing with themselves or that one of their friends has experienced.

I have found out so much about my daughters and their lives while discussing  book club books. And it’s not always serious. Sometimes we laugh so hard at the words we’re reading that we have to put the book down until we recover. Sometimes we look things up that we read about so we can learn more about a topic. Sometimes we’re inspired to read more books by the same author. And sometimes we just agree that we don’t much care for what we’re reading.

Does this mean we have a perfect relationship with no arguments and in-depth conversations when we want them? That’s too much of a fairy tale story. But I do believe that the years we have spent in book club has given us so many great shared experiences that we are closer than we may otherwise be.

Benefits of a Mother-Daughter Book Club

This morning I had the chance to speak about mother-daughter book clubs on a Portland television show, AM  Northwest (click here to watch a clip). While prepping for the program, I was very focused on why moms and daughters want to be in book clubs together as well as the logistics of how to make it happen.

While there are probably as many reasons for being in a book club as there are moms and daughters in them (and I talk about quite a few of those reasons in Book by Book), after talking with club members all over the country I have found three overriding benefits:

• Mother-daughter book clubs can help you stay closer to your daughter.
• They provide a way to connect with the broader community around you.
• They help your daughter develop her literacy skills, which can lead to greater success in school.

Each day during the rest of this week, I’ll highlight a single benefit and discuss it in detail. As I talk about each benefit, it would be great if any of you in mother-daughter book clubs add your own comments about your own experiences and list other benefits you see from being in your club.

Stay tuned!

Madeleine’s Last Official Book Club Meeting

Last week Madeleine and I went to the last official meeting of our mother-daughter book club. I think we’re all in denial because it was just like a regular ol’ meeting. No fanfare or anything out of the ordinary. We just can’t quite admit yet that our little girls are all grown up and will soon head off on their own.

The girls graduate soon, and then they’re all off to college. As a sign of just how much has changed since we all started out together when the girls were 9, we finished by reading an assortment of David Sedaris books. That’s a far cry from the sweet books we read back then.

We talked about a few of our favorites over the years. Many people said their favorite book of all was the one we started with: The Hermit Thrush Sings by Susan Butler. There was the time we went together as a group to hear Richard Peck talk about his books and writing and read from his yet to be published The Teacher’s Funeral. We read The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and went to see a theater production adapted from it. And of course, our weekends away have been great fun every time we’ve been able to schedule them.

We’re still trying to figure out how to keep our group together in some way. The moms are talking about signing up for a  series of author lectures. And we plan to have a reunion every year when the girls come home from college. We’re not all on Facebook yet, but that may be an option at some point.

Here’s the list of books we’ve read during our eight years together. Our favorites are followed by stars:

2001

• The Hermit Thrush Sings – Susan Butler*
• Dealing with Dragons – Patricia Wrede*
• Ginger Pye – Eleanor Estes
• Julie of the Wolves – Jean Craighead George*
• Our Only May Amelia – Jennifer Holm*
• Ella Enchanted – Gail Carson Levine*
• Nancy Drew Mysteries – Carolyn Keene
• Bat 6 – Virginia Euwer Wollf*
• Stargirl – Jerry Spinelli*

2002

• The Heart of a Chief – Joseph Bruchac*
• Jacob Have I Loved – Katherine Paterson
• Anne Frank The Diary of a Young Girl – Anne Frank*
• Boy – Roald Dahl*
• Boston Jane – Jennifer Holm*
• Walk Across the Sea – Susan Fletcher*
• The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett*
• Joey Pigza Loses Control – Jack Gantos
• Coraline – Neil Gaiman

2003

• Everything on a Waffle – Polly Horvath*
• Goddesses:  Heaven Sent – Clea Hantman
• Tangerine – Edward Bloor*
• A Year Down Yonder – Richard Peck*
• Going Solo – Roald Dahl*
• Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging – Louise Rennison*
• Fair Weather – Richard Peck*
• A Step from Heaven – An Na
• Mates, Dates and Inflatable Bras – Cathy Hopkins*
• The Second Summer of the Sisterhood – Ann Brashares*

2004

• Biting the Moon – Martha Grimes
• A Matter of Profit – Hilari Bell*
• The Adrian Mole Diaries – Sara Thompson
• The First Part Last – Angela Johnson
• The Princess Diaries – Meg Cabot*
• Hoot – Carl Hiassen*
• Holding Up the Earth – Dianne Gray
• Missing Persons:  The Rose Queen – M.E. Rabb
• The Pearl – John Steinbeck

2005

• Hope Was Here – Joan Bauer*
• West With the Night – Beryl Markham
• Speak – Laurie Halse Anderson*
• Search of the Moon King’s Daughter – Linda Holeman
• Keeping the Moon – Sarah Dessen
• The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd*
• Ready or Not – Meg Cabot

2006

• Light Years – Tammar Stein*
• A Certain Slant of Light – Laura Whitcomb*
• The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
• The Life of Pi – Yann Martel
• In the Time of the Butterflies – Julia Alvarez
• Girls for Breakfast – Jimmy Woo

2007

• Millions – Frank Cottrell Boyce*
• Driver’s Ed – Caroline Cooney
• The Crucible – Arthur Miller
• The Higher Power of Lucky – Susan Patron
• The Pilot’s Wife – Anita Shreve
• Uglies – Scott Westerfeld*
• Voices from the Street – Jessica Morrell
• Twilight – Stephenie Meyer*

2008

• What’s Eating Gilbert Grape – Peter Hedges*
• Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen*
• Looking for Alaska – John Green
• This Boy’s Life – Tobias Wolf
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey*
• The Glass Castle – Jeannette Walls

2009

• Jane Austen novels*
• Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
• The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan*
• Various titles by David Sedaris*

Add a Little Poetry to Your Meetings

April is National Poetry Month, and it’s a good time for mother-daughter book clubs to consider selecting poetry for a meeting.

There are many ways you can enhance a book club poetry meeting to extend to the whole family. My book club chose to read poetry for a month a few years ago, and everyone in the family got into the act. First, we all headed to our local library to pick out books of poetry that we wanted to read (in addition to our assigned book). My husband and I went for some of the classic poets that we read when we were younger, because we wanted to remind ourselves of some of our past favorites. We chose Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson and others. We also added a few poets we weren’t familiar with, like Langston Hughes.

Our daughters both chose books with poetry that would make them laugh. They liked Jack Prelutsky’s A Pizza the Size of the Sun, and It’s Raining Pigs and Noodles. We took turns reading our favorites out loud over the dinner table each night.

We also tried our hand at writing poetry. I can’t say that anything profound came out of our efforts, but it was a great creative endeavor, and we wrote poems we could be proud of. When it came time for our group meeting, we had a great time reading some of our favorite poems out loud and sharing some of the work we had written as well.

Check out some of these titles of poetry that kids may enjoy if you plan to have a poetry meeting of your own:

•    Kenn Nesbitt—Revenge of the Lunch Ladies, My Hippo Has Hiccups: And Other Poems I Totally Made Up, and several other collections of poetry.
•    Jack Prelutsky—A Pizza the Size of the Sun and It’s Raining Pigs and Noodles, plus more titles of poetry.
•    Robert Louis Stevenson—A Child’s Garden of Verses.
•    Emily Dickinson—The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.