Summer Book Clubs

A few years ago, my friend Teresa and I decided to hold a book club for our daughters and their friends. We wanted to keep them reading over the summer and thought it would also be a fun way to keep the girls connected through the off school months. That first summer we read a great book called "Trouble Don't Last" about a runaway slave. We met once a week for 6 weeks...



discussed the book, did various related projects and games and finished off the experience by taking the girls to our local Freedom Center museum which had an age appropriate exhibit about past and present slavery in our world. The girls were very interested in our local history and were amazed to learn about the things that actually happened right in our backyards. The book club was a success and we continued the next summer with a book on friendship, knowing that the girls were headed into those pre-teen years of difficult relationships. More on that in a later post...

So, after several summers of hosting a girls’ book club at our house, Adam, my then 7 year old decided it seemed like too much fun to miss. Could we also have a boys book club? After all, he bargained, it’s harder to get boys to read in elementary school than girls. Have I mentioned that Adam is a seasoned negotiator?

I compromised and suggested a modified sort of book club. (I actually wasn’t sure how many 7 year old boys I could sell on the idea). We’d pick a book, read it and then get together later in the summer for some discussion and activities at a “party”. Adam was good with that for the first try, so we started looking for a book.

The boys had just finished 2^nd grade so we chose the kids classic version of Treasure Island. I encouraged the other boys Adam had invited to read it along with their dads – either together as a read aloud or separately so dads and kids could discuss it as they went along. I hoped it would be a challenging and fun bonding experience for dads and their sons.

At the father son party, this book lent itself to active pirate games including a full out treasure hunt where the boys had to solve clues based on what they had read. We made pirate ships out of milk cartons and played a great game my friend Beth had at her son’s pirate themed birthday party called “walk the plank”. The boys and dads had to walk across a long, raised 2 by 4 while my daughter and I stood to the side with the leaf blower and the hose on mist. It was pretty funny watching grown men try to keep their balance during the “storm” like one of the scenes in the book. The boys really surprised me with their thoughts about what they had read and the different ideas they had about the characters, and watching them interact with their dads about reading was pretty stinking cool.

It was also a great way for Darrin to get to know Adam’s friends’ fathers – something that is not always as easy as it is for moms. It was a great success and the beginning of the next summer had 3rd grade boys asking if we could do another book club. Gotta love that. Happy reading!