This Mother Daughter Book Club

Amazon description: In the old days, when Kate had no interest in romance, she never cared what other people thought. Now, it appeared, love was turning her into a rotten human being.  Eleven-year-old Kate Faber wishes she could talk to her best friend Marilyn about this. But Marilyn is no longer her best friend. Or is she? Kate and Marilyn had always been the kind of best friends who lived on the same block for their entire lives and who could agree on the kind of boys worth kissing or who should be invited to their sleepover. The kind of best friends who didn't need words to talk, but always just knew. But lately Marilyn has started to think that Kate can be a bit babyish. And Kate thinks that Marilyn is acting like a big snob. And a lot of the time, well, it feels as though they don't know each other anymore. Somehow nothing is the same, but secretly, Kate and Marilyn both wish it could be.

What a timely book. We follow Esperanza, an affluent 12 year old girl who lives in Mexico and loves her family and her life.  A few twists and turns and she ends up escaping Mexico and crossing the border to the United States. Her life changes overnight.   This book made it easy to open discussion with the girls about what is happening with immigration in the United States right now and the hate that is sometimes directed at immigrants. The girls were impressed that Esperanza never gave up even though she came close to losing hope.

This book was about a girl who is a math genius but also exhibits obsessive-compulsive behaviors.  Because it's the 1930s, many (including her parents) don't think she should pursue her love of math.  Her grandfather is her fiercest advocate and helps her on her journey. We had great discussions about "what girls can do and what boys can do" and how to pay attention when gender bias slips in-- it's tough because it's so built in to our culture in the United States. The girls were also floored that a movie only cost 10 cents in the 1930s!

This book is a GEM. Set in Key West in the 1930s, Turtle tries to join The Diaper Gang-- a group of boys that get paid in candy to babysit babies in their neighborhood. There is so much to talk about in subtle ways with our girls from this book:  the value in boy/girl friendships (proven to reduce risk of rape-- simply by encouraging boy/girl friendships), why boys/girls self-segregate, does gender matter in terms of being good at something, what does family mean, how do you know when to trust someone, is money worth more than people? We had some great discussions with this one.

This book such a little gem.  I assume it's out of print because it's been replaced by The Care and Keeping of You.  This book reads like a fun magazine of empowerment, introspection, and positive self-care.  It opened up some great conversations about what makes someone beautiful, what the difference is between people in magazines and "real" people, and the inner-workings of female friendships.

What a special book! We read The Penderwicks this month and had some great conversations about what people expect from girls versus what individual girls want to do or be respected for.  We talked about how different each of the four sisters were and who they identified with most. After our book talk, we watched a clip from Toddlers in Tiaras and asked the girls what they thought about it-- we talked about what they think their mothers value about them and "What makes your mom proud of you?" and also asked them how they might think the girls in Toddlers in Tiaras feel and what they are learning about what is important.  We then watched a clip from a Shirley Temple movie and asked them to compare.

What a terrific book! Tua (which means peanut) sees an elephant being mistreated and decides to help it escape.  She goes on a daring journey to bring the elephant to safety and learns a lot along the way. The girls mostly enjoyed this book, though they sometimes needed a bit of help understanding some of what was going on, or some of the references. At book club we talked about the welfare of women & girls around the world-- what it's like to stand up for what you know is right, and how we would feel if we were in Tua's situation.