The first real event I got to host in my new house was my daughter’s
book club meeting last weekend. I volunteered to host book club because
I figured it would give me good incentive to get cleaned up and
organized, plus I thought it would be nice for Aden to have so many of
her friends over at one time in her new house. I think everything went
well.
The idea of a mother-daughter book club was first suggested to me by a
friend years ago when our two oldest girls were both pretty small. She
said she knew people whose kids were in sixth grade, and that they’d
meet every month to discuss a book, do a craft and have a snack. That
sounded so sweet to me that I asked her if she wanted to start our own
mini book club using picture books. It was nice, but we were only able
to make that happen twice. My friend and I have schedules that are hard
to coordinate, so the little book club faded away although the idea of
it stayed with me.
Then recently a different friend with better networking skills than
mine asked me if I wanted to participate in a book club for Aden and
some other kids in her class. Most of the other kids in the club are
boys so it wasn’t quite the same book club I’d originally envisioned,
but I knew it would be fun, so we’ve been meeting about every six weeks
since the beginning of the year. We started out with some of the Magic
Treehouse books, but whoever hosts the meeting gets to pick the book,
and for this most recent meeting Aden chose The Invention of Hugo Cabret
by Brian Selznick.
It’s a marvelous book, if a bit dark for second graders. It has
beautiful pencil drawings that function more like sections of a graphic
novel rather than illustrations. I’d read it to Aden last year and she
wanted her friends to hear it too. Since the story takes place in Paris
we made crepes for the snack (which is not as elaborate as it sounds
because we make crepes at home so often I could do them in my sleep),
and since there is a lot in the book about clockworks we painted
clocks. (While looking around online for clock parts for my clock
project in the kitchen, I came across a great sale where you could buy a
whole unpainted clock kit really really cheap, so it was hard to
resist. Kids do so many crafts that you run out of room for, but a
clock you can actually use so it seemed like a good way to go.)
I’m typing this on Mother’s Day, and that combined with thinking
about the book club has me reflecting on how many wonderful moms I
know. One of my great regrets in life is that I don’t have the kind of
time to devote to cultivating some of these relationships more deeply,
but events like the book club at least give me a sense of what
remarkable people are out there. It’s been nice to take turns being in
the homes of different families and to get to know some of the kids my
daughter spends most of her days with. All the moms in the book club
are warm and talented in different ways, and seem like genuinely
supportive people. Even though I don’t know them as well as I’d like, I
honestly believe if I were in a crisis and reached out to any of them,
they would respond in a heartbeat. That’s what good moms do. Truly
good moms have a quality about them that extends past the care of their
own children to having a nurturing influence where it’s needed in their
greater environment. Part of how I knew I wanted to be a mom was that I
had a protective sense about kids in general, not just a desire to have
my own.
The book club provides a lot of good opportunities to talk to our
kids about topics that don’t come up in an average day. I’m always
surprised and impressed at what the kids have to say about the books.
The favorite moments in the stories for the moms are invariably
different from those of the kids, and that’s interesting too. I think
it’s good to have a forum with an equal number of kids and adults where
everyone is listened to, and anyone can lead the discussion.
Admittedly
the adults usually set the pace and ask the questions, but a couple of
kids in particular do contribute a great deal. With The Invention of
Hugo Cabret we were even able to explain to our kids a little bit about
how they live in a privileged time where people often have kids because
they really want them and hope to spend time with them. The book is set
during an earlier part of the twentieth century when many things were
harder and the children in the book are not treated tenderly. We got a
chance to explain the word hypocrisy. And then we got to eat
strawberries and yogurt and nutella on crepes and paint clocks. Not a
bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon, and I feel like the house has been
officially broken in for entertaining.
I hope we’re able to keep the book club running for a long time. You
never know how things will work out with people’s lives and scheduling
with families, but book club is worth making time for. It’s always good
to make time to read. (And do a craft and have a snack.)
No comments:
Post a Comment