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.
Kyra is back from the mental institution where she spent six months after her dad thought she wanted to kill herself. She’s been released to return home and go back to high school, because she’s not considered a threat to herself any more. But that doesn’t mean life is easy. Her dad, whom she calls Roger, is keeping a tight leash on her, she hates school and gets in trouble her first day back, and she’s very angry. Angry at Roger, angry at her mother who died of cancer a few years ago, and most of all angry at the guy she calls Fanboy, who told Roger she may be suicidal and got her sent away in the first place.
While Kyra was away, Fanboy has suddenly gone from being a geek to being popular with a lot of the kids in school. He’s publishing his graphic novel serially in the pages of the school journal, and he’s getting a lot of attention for it. Before, no one really knew Fanboy except Kyra. She gave him advice about his graphic novels, and she thought they may become more than friends. But now that Fanboy seems to have dropped her and moved on, she’s bent on getting revenge.
Goth Girl Rising by Barry Lyga is not an easy book to read, mostly because Kyra is such a hard character to like. Her emotions are raw, she bucks all authority, and she’s what every parent doesn’t want to have for a child: a smoking, cursing, school-skipping, car-stealing, in-your-face girl. Yet, interspersed between the chapters with Kyra’s voice are vignettes of a small poem that builds as the book goes on. It’s Kyra’s memory of her cancer-chemotherapy-ravaged mother’s last days. These vignettes give you a glimpse into the pain and guilt that Kyra has never dealt with since her mother’s illness and death, and you begin to see what’s behind her self-destructive behavior.
While Goth Girl Rising is a continuation of the story from The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl, this book stands on its own and you don’t have to have read the first one to appreciate it. This book is definitely for older girls, I’d say 15 and up. The teens use foul language, are sexually promiscuous, drink alcohol, smoke, and make very bad decisions based on faulty information. It all feels painfully real, and the situations should provide great discussions between mothers and daughters and book club members.
Fourteen-year-old Joseph Michtom knows he’s one of the lucky ones in New York during the early 1900s. He’s the son of a successful Russian immigrant. He’s got a warm place to live, enough food so he doesn’t go hungry, and family to love him. Although sometimes he doesn’t feel so lucky, because his parents no longer spend much time with him now that they are consumed with their new venture—sewing and selling as many of the new “Teddy bears” as they can. Joseph’s parents came up with the idea for creating the cuddly animals after President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a cornered bear while on a bear hunt.
Joseph’s family has found new wealth and prestige from their invention, but the boys in the neighborhood treat Joseph differently, as though he’s changed from the same old Joe who has always been a friend. Joe spends a lot of time with his sister Emily and their baby brother Benjamin. Joe and Emily dream of going to Coney Island one day, but it doesn’t seem as though their parents will ever take enough time off to take them there.
Interspersed with Joe’s story are vignettes of homeless children living under the Brooklyn Bridge. They leave home for many reasons, either they are abused or orphaned or crippled in some way, but they find shelter and solace with each other.
Karen Hesse’s novel Brooklyn Bridge is a wonderful portrait of family in its many facets as well as the story of the struggle of immigrants to leave their old lives behind and fit into their new country. It paints a rich picture of Brooklyn in the early 1900s. We get a picture of life in Russia that many of Joseph’s friends and family left, and of his aunt who worked tirelessly so that many could leave their homeland and find opportunity in the U.S. There’s a strong sense of family obligations, helping out your fellow man, and showing respect to adults. Issues to discuss with mother-daughter book clubs include homelessness, historical events in Russia and the U.S., immigration, sibling relationships and family dynamics. Highly recommended for clubs with girls aged 9 to 12.
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.
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.
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.
This morning I had the chance to speak about mother-daughter book clubs on a Portland television show, AM Northwest. 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!
Once again the American Library Association is calling attention to books that are taken off of library shelves with Banned Book Week. One of my favorites on the top ten list from last year is the book series referred to as His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman. This includes The Golden Compass, The Subtle Kinfe and The Amber Spyglass. I’ve read these books to both my daughters and found them to be thought provoking and highly original.
On the Web site for Banned Books Week you can find information about books banned in certain years, or specific decades. You can also check a list of the most banned classics. Check out the ALA’s site to find which of your favorite books are on the lists.
