Just As Long As We're Together

I really loved just as long as we're together. And of course it's a Judy Bloom book so it has to be good right? Just as long as we're together was a book about three girls who are best friends and it's all about them and navigating their friendship, it's ups and it's downs. For our yummy snack that we had at book club it was brownies and stuffing (if you read the book you will understand). I don't know that very many people have read this book and it's been around for a while. The only reason we found it was because one of the moms had read it in elementary school. I am super glad we read Just As Long As We're Together!!

It's a NEW year!

We have now been doing our book club for over a year!

I, for one, am so thankful for this Book Club and feel enriched and surprised by all that has come out of it this last year.  I've learned that our 9 year old daughters are very insightful and quite observant.  They draw our attention to pieces of the book we may have skimmed over.

To kick off our new year, we decided to have a "choice" year.  Each mother daughter team brought about 5 books to the table (literally... to the coffee table!) and voted on which books we wanted for 2017.  How did we vote?  Well, first of all, we took turns reading the book jackets aloud, then the 3 girls met and decided there was one book they wanted to toss out of the voting process-- none of them wanted to read it.  Then, we were each given 6 smooth stones we could place on the books we wanted.  You could put all 6 stones on one book if you wanted to be sure it made the list.  Most of us didn't use more than 1-2 stones on each book, though.


And the 2017 picks are... (in order of most stones to least stones)...


And for documentation purposes... here is everything we read from the time we started til now:

December 2015	Hannah Divided
January 2016	Hairspray
FEBRUARY	The Penderwicks
MARCH	Secret Language of Girls
APRIL	Turtle in Paradise
MAY	Story of Ferdinand
JUNE	My Life with the Chimpanzees
JULY	Tua and the Elephant
AUGUST	BREAK
SEPTEMBER	Esperanza Rising
OCTOBER	Vanished
NOVEMBER	The Night Gardener
DECEMBER	Alanna The First Adventure
January 2017	Just As Long As We’re Together

Are You Up for Adventure?

Well Alanna is! She starts out as a young girl who is afraid of the magical Gift she and her twin brother were born with. But Alanna feels uncomfortable about what is next in life and decides to take matters into her own hands. By then, she realizes that her Gift was meant to help the lives of others and without believing in it, she could accidentally hurt or possibly kill a friend! She meets unusual and royal friends along the way, but all the while, getting closer and closer to her dream. I like Alanna and I think that we could be great friends. This is why I chose Alanna: The First Adventure during my turn in book club. I enjoyed coming up with the questions for my two friends, their moms, and my mom. Find more about Alanna and her adventures by reading Alanna: The First Adventure!

This is me and my friends with the book, Alanna: The First Adventure at our book club!

Finding Our Voices After the Election

We're getting to work. We're empowering our girls to be strong leaders. 



3 days after the election, we held an emergency book club meeting.  We've been following Hillary in our book club for a year... we first talked about it when we did our Gender Stereotypes chapter-- and we noticed the different treatment Hillary got compared to the male candidates.  We took note at how she reacted and responded to criticism and bullying.  It's been a lot to process the election results on many levels-- but specifically within what we'd been focused on in our mother-daughter book club, it's tough to reconcile how a woman who worked so hard and had so much experience lost to a man who had no experience and a poor work ethic.

We read Still I Rise by Maya Angelou, we made beaded safety pins to wear to show we are allies (above), we talked about how we feel and what we can do, we quilted a square for Hillary's quilt, we wrote to Hillary to thank her for being an inspiration and role model. 

We are girls. We are women. We are mothers. We are strong. 
We fight for what's right and for what we believe in. 
#motherdaughterbookclub #stillirise #hernextchapter#stillwithher

Our quilt square for Hillary's Thank You Quilt (All Hands In)



Still I Rise..


Letters to Hillary

The Night Gardener

The Night Gardener

So our mother daughter book club

read a book that was actually by my

suggestion that I think everybody

thoroughly enjoyed. It was called 

The Night Gardener. It was about 

two Irish siblings who have been

abandoned by their parents. They

want a job and at least a nice warm

bed to sleep in. They find their-

selves employed by a family

who lives in a spooky old

house and has a bad history.

DO NOT read this book

until you are the age of 

at least maybe older. It

depends if you like scary stories.

This is a picture of the food we brought

for our book club discussion. Some of 

the foods that are mentioned in the

book are biscuits, sausages, tea,

chocolate truffles (in Britain chocolate

is considered candy) and potatoes!

(we had potato chips.) It was delicious.

I was the discussion leader and I 

had five questions. That turned out to 

be perfect. Book club this month was awesome!

-Kaia

Turtle in Paradise

Turtle In Paradise by Kaia

Turtle in paradise was a really good book,

written by Jennifer Holm. She wrote a book

about a girl named "Turtle"(yes I know it's

a weird name). Turtle is named for her

hard shell and soft underbelly like a 

turtle's. But she doesn't let her name

make her the butt of the joke. When she has

to move to Key West she doesn't complain

or cry. I admire Turtle's courage a lot during

this book when she has to go through a lot

of different circumstances. She stays

calm and carries on as they say.

So, we had a book club.

These are pictures of the cut-up that appears in this book!

A cut-up is a whole bunch of different foods cut up together.

There's avacados,onions,papaya, just to name a few.

We did this book club in April but I just wanted to do

a review on it cause this was a really good book that

if you haven't read it already should totally read. Oh and if you

loved this book like I did there's a sequel "Full of Beans."

Vanished

This month in book club I got to lead.  I got to choose a book for everybody to read and then I asked my own questions about the book.  The book I chose was called Vanished.  It is a mystery book.

The main character in it is a girl named Neela.  The book is about a veena that goes missing (a veena is a type of instrument), and everybody is trying to find it. 

I came up with 8 questions and when we got to book club I asked them to everyone (I forgot to answer my own questions)!  I thought I was going to be really nervous but it was actually really fun to lead the group.  Usually it's the parents who lead but this time it was me so it was really fun.  I think people liked the book I picked.  I really like it, too.  

Now, it's Kaia's turn and she picked The Night Gardener.  

I am glad that instead of answering questions from the book this time, instead one of us kids gets to pick and we get to have our own made-up questions-- and choose our own book!

What makes book club so great is that I get to spend time with my friends and we get to read which I love to do.  And in every book there is a good role model for girls-- or anybody!  Book Club rocks!
-Zoe