Book Review: The Pink Locker Society: Best Kept Secret by Debra Moffitt

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The Pink Locker Society: Best Kept Secret imageThe Pink Locker Society is back up and running after being shut down in the first book of the series: Only Girls Allowed.

In this book, Best Kept Secret, Jemma and her friends secretly continue to answer questions that pre-teens and early teens have about the PBBs—periods, bras and boys. In addition to keeping their advice web going, the girls are also debating the modern implications of a “Sadie Hawkins” dance and it’s origins in giving unattractive girls a chance to find a husband. Bet, one of the four girls in the society, does a video segment for her school on what girls, boys and adults feel about the Backwards Dance, which is their school’s version of Sadie Hawkins.

Jemma also is trying to get up the nerve to ask Forrest, who she’s had a crush on forever, to the dance. But there’s conflict when Forrest shows interest in one of her friends. The Best Kept Secret keeps The Pink Locker Society series humming. Issues to discuss include Title IX and its effect on women in sports, how friendship can be affected when two girls like the same boy, and how traditions may evolve to keep up with modern realities.

Author Moffitt is the kids’ editor at Kids Health.org, so she really has her finger on the pulse of the kinds of questions girls ask and what they want to know more about. Answers to all the questions asked in the book are answered in the back, and more resources can be found at Kids Health.org. This series is a good way for moms and daughters to broach topics that could otherwise be awkward to talk about. I recommend it for girls aged nine to 13 and their moms.

Book Review: Real Mermaids Don’t Wear Toe Rings by Hèléne Boudreau

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Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings imageAt 13, Jade has a lot to deal with: she’s still getting over her mother’s drowning death a year ago, she just got her first period, and she might have a crush on a guy who surely thinks she’s weird. But nothing prepares her for what happens when she takes a warm bath in salt water to ease her period cramps. For it is then that Jade turns from a normal teenager with average concerns into a freaked-out girl with a mermaid’s tale.

Real Mermaids Don’t Wear Toe Rings by Hèléne Boudreau is at turns light-hearted and serious as it explores how Jade’s life evolves along with her ability to walk on two legs. On the one hand, Jade and her dad discuss mermaid legends and try to find out how she can go to school, be with her friends and appear normal in her everyday life. On the other, Jade discovers something about her mother’s drowning accident that points to a dark side of the mermaid life.

While at times Jade seems more like 16 than 13, for the most part her tale is fun to follow. Part comedy, part adventure, part fantasy and part mystery, it’s entirely a story to enjoy. I recommend it for girls aged nine to 13.

Book Review: Contagion by Joanne Dahme

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For as long as she can remember, Rose has been promised to Patrick Dugan, a liaison forged between their two prominent Philadelphia Irish families. Once married to him she finds herself mistress of a grand home and a staff of servants.

But their marriage also began with sadness, as Rose’s parents both died from typhoid and Patrick’s parents were felled by accidents. Now the threat of typhoid is being raised again—by Patrick who wants a lucrative city contract to build filtration ponds to prevent it. The city waterworks bureau, and its dedicated guardian, Sean, maintains the water can be safe without the ponds if pollution can be kept from it.

The conflict spills into Rose’s life when a series of threatening letters warn her husband to stop his efforts. Then her best friend Nellie is murdered. With the help of the police and of Sean, Rose searches for Nellie’s murderer and puts her own life in danger in the process.

Contagion by Joanne Dahme is set in the late 1800s, a time when cities were trying to figure out how to accommodate industrial growth while maintaining the integrity of their water supply. Through Rose’s eyes we see both the beauty and grandeur of Philadelphia at the time and the seedier side of life that was reality for many workers. It was also a time of political and police corruption that often led to back-room deals that had little to do with the population’s welfare.

Part historical fiction, part mystery, Contagion will have you wanting to savor the details while you also long to flip pages furiously and find out what happens. I recommend it for mother-daughter book clubs with girls aged 14 and up.

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Reading and Technology: A Study from Scholastic, Inc.

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This month in my newsletter I referred to a recent study by Scholastic, Inc. that discovered a few interesting things about kids, reading, and their parents’ concerns about technology. The Scholastic Study found that from age 6 – 17, the time kids spend reading books for fun declines, while the time they spend going online for fun and using a cell phone to text or talk increases.

In the same study, parents expressed “concern that the use of electronic and digital devices negatively affects the time kids spend reading books (41%), doing physical activities (40%), and engaging with family (33%).”

But what is surprising is that more time with technology doesn’t have to point to a decline in reading. Scholastic says “the study also found indications that technology could be a positive motivator to get kids reading — 57 percent of kids (age 9-17) say they are interested in reading an eBook, and a third of children age 9-17 say they would read more books for fun if they had access to eBooks on an electronic device. This includes kids who read 5-7 days per week (34%), 1 to 4 days per week (36%) and even those who read less than one day per week (27%).”

While I’m still happily turning paper pages in bound books, and so are my daughters, I’m optimistic that reading devices of many kinds can actually increase reading and possibly have a positive effect on literacy. My local library is betting on that too. They are now holding classes that let people test-drive several models of e-readers before they decide if they want to buy one. They also feature Library2Go, a service in Oregon that lets patrons download books to an e-reader. As with regular library books, the electronic versions have a due date and disappear off the device when that date comes around. The library is also experimenting with a system that would allow patrons to check out e-readers.

It’s hard to imagine all this will go away even if some of us will hold onto paper and ink books until they are pried out of our cold, dead hands. As much as I love the physical aspects of a book, I’m not actively against e-readers. I’ve even added an iPad (gotta love Apple!) to my gift wish list this year, so I may soon get to see for myself how reading with technology will affect my reading habits.

Read more about the Scholastic study at their website.

Read a blog post by author Christina Katz as she reflects on how technology has and has not changed her reading habits.

Game Review: Bananagrams

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Bananagrams imageI love puzzles almost as much as I love books. When I see crosswords, Sudoku grids and word search puzzles, my fingers start to itch and I scan the clues even if I don’t have a pencil in my hand and don’t intend to solve it.

Solving puzzles is mostly a solitary activity, one I like to do on my own without input. So I was particularly please when I recently discovered a game that is like a puzzle for multiple players. It’s called Bananagrams, and you can play in groups of two all the way up to 7 or more, so it’s easy to be social while fulfilling your puzzling urge.

Here’s how it works. Each player gets a certain number of tiles, each printed with a letter of the alphabet. Each player then has to create words with their tiles in any combination they can come up with. It’s sort of like a cross between Scrabble and Boggle. Every word is distinct, but every player builds her own word puzzle instead of everybody building on everybody else’s words.

What I really like about Banaagrams is that you can change the words you’ve created as you go along. For instance, once when I played I built the word player into my puzzle. Then I decided I could use the “e” and “r” in another place to help me use more tiles. So I just took those two letters off and used them elsewhere.

It’s a creative way to keep you thinking about all the possibilities of which words letters can create. My husband, daughter and I had a great time playing Bananagrams. It took a lot of concentration at first, but once we got the hang of it, it was really challenging and a lot of fun. I also liked that there are no scores to add up or records to keep (you could add a scoring system easily is you’re competitive.) I recommend it as a family game or as an activity to add to your book club meetings.

The game comes in a bright yellow, banana-shaped pouch that’s easy to pack and take with you on a vacation. It also takes up very little room on your game shelf. I have seen Bananagrams for sale in many bookstores. You can also check it out on the company’s website: http://www.bananagrams-intl.com.

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Book Review: Jane and the Raven King by Stephen Chambers

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Jane and the Raven King imageJane knows something is up when she spots a squirrel packing a suitcase. Things get even stranger when she realizes that birds aren’t singing and all the wild animals seem to be leaving. As adults get more and more distracted by the technology all around, Jane discovers the Raven King is behind all the weird events. He wants to take over the world, and Jane may just be the one to stop him.

Jane and the Raven King by Stephen Chambers introduces us to a strange world where animals can talk and humans are vulnerable to being controlled by cell phones, televisions and computers. Jane and a handful of other children are the only ones who resist falling under the spell. Led by an old blind man, who becomes a cat-like creature in the underworld, Jane and the others are intent on stopping the Raven King from taking over everything and using it for his evil purposes.

Imaginative and adventuresome, Jane and the Raven King creates a fantasy world where Jane has to rely on her wits and her desire to do what’s right to save everyone and everything she knows. She’s a strong girl who calls on her grandmother’s spirit to help her when she needs it. I recommend it for girls aged nine to 12.

How to Be a Good Book Club Member

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When book club members get together you can usually count on good fun, good company and great socializing. What’s not to like? But with all the fun you have at meetings, it may be easy to forget that you need to exert a little effort too if you want to have good discussions.

You may balk at the idea that book club has to be work at all. Sometimes what you’re looking for after a long day at work or with the kids is just to escape. The last thing you may want is another obligation hanging over your head.

Yet without a good discussion, book club is just another social event. And while that may be okay for a meeting or two, over the long term you and other members may find yourselves dissatisfied without good book talk to anchor your time together.

The good news is that spending a little effort to be a good book club member doesn’t have to take a lot of time or energy. Here are a few tips you may want to keep in mind whether you’re attending a book club meeting or hosting one.

  1. Come prepared to talk about the book. Think about what you liked or disliked about it, and point to specific examples. You can save time by marking passages with sticky notes as you read so you don’t have to go back and look for examples after you’re done.
  2. Give your full attention to other members when they talk, and don’t start a separate conversation with the person sitting next to you.
  3. Save unrelated personal stories for social time leading up to or after book discussion.
  4. When it’s your turn to choose the book, be ready to recommend a title. That way everyone can get started reading soon after the meeting if they’d like.
  5. When you host book club, have a set of questions ready to keep conversation going. Otherwise it may be easy for discussion to get off track.
  6. Be ready with dates in mind that work for your next meeting., and offer to help clean up before you go.

Discussion Questions for A Match Made in High School by Kristin Walker

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My mother-daughter book club met a couple of days ago to discuss A Match Made in High ScA Match Made in High School imagehool by Kristin Walker. (See my previous review.) We had a lively discussion about everything from friends and social circles, to judging people based on superficial assessments, to cheerleading, to marriage, to pranking and more. We kept our discussion on track with a list of questions provided by the author. You may benefit from using the questions too. Just keep in mind that some of the questions reveal what happens in the book, so you may not want to look them over until you finish reading the book.

A Match Made in High School Discussion Questions

1. One of the themes I tried to emphasize was the idea that people are more than what they seem on the surface, more than their stereotype or the label we’ve given them. Which characters show this? What about the adult characters?

2. Marriage is such a hot topic these days. Many people seem to draw specific boundaries around which kind of relationships qualify as marriage and which don’t. I tried to illustrate some of the various forms that relationships and marriage can take. Can you identify them? Do you feel they fit the criteria for marriage? What about the marriages that failed?

3. Drawing forward from the previous question, what about gay marriage? I tried very hard to address the topic with the subplot of Uncle Tommy, as well as with the POMME mothers. In what ways does Uncle Tommy’s relationship mirror or differ from other relationships in the book?

4. I’ve caught some flack for deviating from the normal formula for a romance novel by not having Fiona end up with Todd. My intent was to prove that the quiet, overweight loner can get the girl. Did you like that? Or did it make you mad that Fiona and Todd never got together?

5. Many people have found Fiona to be unlikable at the beginning, but I had to make her that way in order to show her growth and change over the course of the book. In what ways did she change? Where do you think the turning point was?

6. How did you feel about the mother-daughter relationship between Fiona and her mother, Vivian? In what ways did they work toward the same goal?

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