Last night twelve moms and daughters gathered for our February book club meeting. This is my book club with my younger daughter, Catherine, who is in 7th grade.
Our hostesses planned a lively evening with activity ideas from the book. Remember Me to Harold Square is about a high school boy from Wisconsin who spends six weeks one summer in New York City with friends of his parents, who have a high school daughter and a middle school son. The four parents have devised a six-week-long scavenger hunt for the kids to help them experience the best of the city and stay busy for the entire visit.
We started off with a mom-devised scavenger hunt that had all the girls working together to find the clues they needed to put together a message about their prize: a special English trifle for dessert. The game was quite a hit. When it was over we all enjoyed bagels with cream cheese, lox, and veggies—one of the many meals the book’s characters tried during their adventure.
This book generated lots of great discussion. We talked about whether it’s an advantage for girls to be friends with boys before they start to date them and the difficulties of getting seriously romantically involved with someone when you’re still young. None of the daughters are dating yet, or even plan to, so it was a good way to talk about dating issues theoretically.
We all liked the idea of creating a summer scavenger hunt for museums, parks, food, etc. in our city. The moms voted to put together a list for the girls by the end of school so they can plan summer time together.
Our next selection: Stolen Voices by Zlata Filipovic. We’ve been to two separate readings in Portland with Zlata and are excited to dive into her newest book.
