This Mother Daughter Book Club

Another Zoom Book Club! Took a screenshot on the Kindle Fire but turns out it is a he hassle to get a screenshot off of there, so, here's the cover of the book!

So, everyone in the well, WORLD, is basically quarantined, so we had our first virtual Mother-Daughter Book Club. We talked about The One & Only Ivan--- how interesting it was to hear a story with a gorilla as the narrator, we asked how do we truly show we care about animals, pondered how to tell the difference between zoos that truly care for the animals versus are simply making money using them for human entertainment.  It was a good discussion-- and maybe only 1 more virtual book club till we can be together again!

These girls are getting SO good at discussion! They really took over the talk and explored Hazel's motivations, what would they do in her position, symbolism... WHOOHOO!

We've got four terrific 4th grade girls in our book club, and they were so thoughtful talking about the subjects that came up in Stella's story.  We talked about the KKK (they still exist!?), we talked about how unfair they made it for black people to vote (and discussed how they still find sneaky ways in 2020 to suppress the black vote), we asked if one life is more valuable than another, and the girls asked each other if they thought they'd speak up if they were in that position.  They admitted it would likely be very hard to speak up.  They decided the only wonderful thing about living "back then" was penny candy!

It's so exciting to choose our books! We get to vote with marbles on our 10 favorites. Go check out our Book Log to see what got picked for 2020!

A non-fiction book! The discussion theme for this book was "Girls Are Leaders!" We talked about how Goodall was told women didn't belong doing what she was doing, how there were "alpha positions" in the chimp world, and did they have friends at school who are "alphas", we asked them what kinds of problems they want to solve when they grow up-- and we also asked them if they could name any women leaders they look up to.  We asked them if they think kids are powerful enough to make change, or if they think that only adults can make the word change (spoiler-- they think kids can change a LOT!). Next up:  Our FIRST EVER Book Throwdown!!!!!!  Not only are we choosing 10 new books for 2020, we have two new book club mother-daughter duos!!!! Can't wait to see what 2020 book club looks like!

We had at least 3 books set in the Great Depression this year, so the girls are definitely learning about that period (and maybe being a little grateful for a good life?)! We asked the girls how they thought they would have fared with her tough Grandma, if they thought Mary Alice changed from the time she came to Grandma's til the end of the book, and which character they related to the most. Perhaps a *little* tough for 4th grade because of the euphemisms and references, but with a little conversation with the moms, it helped them understand a time before big tech a little bit.