This week I held my first session of our Writers Circle Read Like a Writer Book Club. We have a great group. The kids are rising 7th and 8th graders and we have two boys and three girls. It is really a perfect mix.

For months, I have been reading one middle grade book after another trying to figure out the best options for the group. I feel really strongly that kids and tweens especially should choose what they read. I am even ok with them reading pretty junky stuff when they read on their own as long as they are reading. I believe that if a kid loves reading, they will eventually gravitate to the good stuff so they really should be given free reign for quite awhile.

That said, for this experience my goal was to find a handful of books for the kids to choose from that would be good for group discussion. I wanted to find a mix of genres, lengths and main characters. I wanted this for the kids and also to make our conversations lively. I began our first session with book talks of the following five titles.

 

Both boys choose Crossover and left talking about their joint love of basketball. Two of the girls immediately chose The Night Gardener and the remaining chose Fish in a Tree. My hope is that by next session the kids will be convincing each other to read their first choices and conversation will flow easily.

Here’s to happy summer reading for all!