Help Your Kids Start a Summer Book Club
You can help your kids prevent the summer learning slide by encouraging them to start their own book club this summer!
Ask your kids to invite a few of their friends to participate. Kids can start by having the first "meeting" to talk about one or two books they would like to read together. You could host the first meeting in your home or backyard, or you could invite the kids to meet at your local library. Let the kids talk about their favorite books and authors and make their own suggestions! If they need help coming up with ideas, you can enlist the aid of your local librarian. You and your kids might also want to browse the themed booklists that are listed below.
Once the first book is selected, kids and their families can check out copies of the book from their local library. If your library does not have enough copies, ask the librarian to help you order additional copies from another branch. Encourage the kids to figure out a good time to meet once or twice a week and chat about the book. Let your kids make the plans for their book club, but feel feel to provide snacks and encouragement to keep them reading!
Check out the following themed reading resources offered by the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance and other authoritative literacy and literature organizations:
A Perfect Kids' Book Club Selection!
A perfect book with massive appeal to kids is the episodic story game The Exquisite Corpse Adventure.
The Exquisite Corpse
Adventure is a progressive story just like the one
many families play on road trips, at camps, at parties, at home when there is a
power outage. It is a game where one person begins a story, stops at a
cliffhanging moment, and the next person picks it up, continuing on until
everyone in the group has the opportunity to contribute. And just like in those
games, in The Exquisite Corpse,
characters spontaneously erupt out of our
authors’ imaginations; plot lines tumble forth, some realized, some lost; and we
are often poised at the edge of a cliff with no logical solution in sight!
The Exquisite Corpse
Adventure appeals to a wide range of kids because it was created by some of their very favorite authors and illustrators: M.T. Anderson, Natalie Babbitt, Calef Brown,
Susan Cooper, Kate DiCamillo, Timothy
Basil Ering, Jack Gantos, Nikki Grimes, Shannon Hale,
Lemony Snicket, Steven Kellogg, Gregory Maguire,
Megan McDonald, Patricia and Fredrick McKissack,
Linda Sue Park, Katherine Paterson,
James Ransome, Jon Scieszka, and Chris Van Dusen.
To help kids engage in The Exquisite Corpse
Adventure, be sure to check out the coordinating educational support materials in the NCBLA’s Exquisite Corpse
Adventure Education Resource Center. Overflowing with supplemental articles, activities,
reading lists, art activities, discussion questions, and more, the Education
Resource Center is designed for moms and dads, teachers and librarians,
grandparents and guardians—all adults who live and work with young people and
have a vested interest in helping kids read more, write better, and
create stories and art that expand all of our universes.
The Exquisite Corpse
Adventure is available in both paperback and hardcover. It is also available on audio. Ask for it at your local library of bookstore!
To buy
The Exquisite
Corpse
Adventure
from the bookseller of your
choice, click here.
