Shireen Dodson - 100 Books for Girls to Grow On

100 Books for Girls to Grow On

LIVELY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE MOST

INSPIRING BOOKS FOR GIRLS

TERRIFIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS TO

SPARK CONVERSATION

GREAT IDEAS FOR BOOK-INSPIRED ACTIVITIES,

CRAFTS, AND FIELD TRIPS

Shireen Dodson

Contents

To the influential matriarchs in my lifeCharlotta Colley, Felice Dodson, and Lillian Spears Carter.

A few years ago, as my elder daughter edged her way toward adolescence, I felt a need to strengthen our connection before it had to weather those turbulent waters. In a moment of inspiration, I hit upon the idea of starting a mother-daughter book club. Nine-year-old Morgan and I invited several other mothers and daughters to join us once a month to talk about a book we had read. That simple idea brought Morgan and me closer together than I could have imagined.

Our club has been a great success. It fosters communication between mothers and their daughters. It forges friendships. And its fun! We are enjoying year three, and the girls still look forward to meetings. They love the chance to talk about issues, especially the issues that would be tough to discuss with their moms outside this safe haven. The moms have an understanding that whats said in the book club stays in the book club. No one can be punished or chastised later on about something she revealed during one of our sessions. We mothers want to hear everything our daughters have to say.

The first year, our book discussions lasted 45 minutes. Not usu-ally less, never more. Year two, they were an hour or so. Were now up to an hour and a half of strictly book discussionthe socializing and refreshment part is on top of that precious hour and a half. As weve all gotten closer, were more apt to get into real-life discussions, and not confine our talk to the plot or characters in that months book. The girls trust each other. Shy girls blossom. Quiet girls be-come outspoken. Everyone feels enough trust to participate.

Another marvelous outgrowth of our club is that whole families have become close. We do things as couples, or with the children. In fact, my family is renting a vacation house with one of the families from the book club for a week this coming summer.

Soon after our group started meeting, I knew I had learned something that was too valuable to keep to myself. I wrote my first book, The Mother-Daughter Book Club (1997), to let other moms in on my secret. That book describes in depth how we started our club and how readers can start clubs of their own.

Ive been on the road talking about that first book ever since. Several major television appearances later, I continue to get calls for interviews from all over the country. Almost every time, its because another mother-daughter book club has started as a result of my book. Im awed by the momentum of mother-daughter book clubs. A grassroots movement that started with one club, now hundreds of mother-daughter book clubs are cropping up. In fact, the idea has taken off into all kinds of combinations. Theres a mother-son book club and a father-son book club in Chicago. Theres an older group of 16- and 17-year-old girls and their mothers who meet in Washington. There are several grandmother-granddaughter clubs, and one of my favorites, mentor-mentee clubs. These mentors are young volunteers, like Big Sisters, who come together to form support groups for girls in their own environments.

There are also school-based clubs, where not every parent may participate, but all the girls do. When I did a workshop for 80 Girl Scout troop leaders, every one of them left saying they were going to start clubs within the troops. A book club brings mothers into the troop, and it gives the troop leader one less activity to plan for the monthly meeting.

In talking to people all over the country, Ive found that what they want to know most is how to make up questions for discussion. They want a tool, a resource to rely upon. So it seemed the next logical step was to provide that toola collection of good books and, more important, good discussion questions. 100 Books for Girls to Grow On grew out of my desire to give fledgling book clubs a way to keep going. I wanted to make it easy for people who have book clubs to have great discussions.

I also wanted to encourage parents and children who are not in book clubs to read together, and to help broaden their reading experience. 100 Books Jar Girls to Grow On helps you select books to read and provides insightful questions so that you can have a wonderful, satisfying one-on-one discussion with your child. From reading my summaries and in-depth questions, you can tell whether a book is right for your child today, much later on, or perhaps (rarely) not at all. After all, children have personalities. Books have personalities. The key is to find a great match, and I think this book can be your matchmaker.

When it comes to criteria for picking the books we read in my club, Im off the hook: the girls choose! For 100 Books for Girls to Grow On, I had to narrow down the enormous field of young adult literature. What an adventure! I read over 400 books and I discovered all over again how great books for this age group are.

Since I decided to write this second book, Morgan started recommending books to me, too. I read everything she suggested and most of the time I agreed with her. A lot of the choices in these pages are hers.

Although I applied certain rules and guidelines in my search, it mostly came down to selecting books that I thought were well written, held my interest, and would make for great discussions. (Yes, I do have favorites among them: A Wrinkle in Time; The Golden Compass; The Eye, the Ear, and the Arm; Habihi; Walk Two Moons; Another Way to Dark Side of Nowhere.) The subjects range from animals and relation-ships to history and science fiction. They arent always about overtly mother-daughter issues. However, there are a few common motifs: coming-of-age stories; interesting, and often slightly offbeat, characters; and multidimensional plots with two or three stories going on at once. One of the things Ive learned during this process is that a book doesnt have to be about mothers and daughters to raise mother-daughter issues.

Youll notice a wide range of complexity within these selections, and thats quite deliberate. Everyone reads at a different level, so there are some books, like The Hundred Dresses, that are relatively easy yet still offer rich discussion opportunities, and some like To Kill a Mockingbird, that are more advanced. Ive learned from our club that the length or difficulty of a book doesnt dictate how long or involved the discussion will be. One time we picked a short picture booka 15-minute readwhich prompted as much discussion as a full-length novel.

I chose certain older titles in order to encourage more bookstores to stock them and to keep them in print. One such title is The Friends, by Rosa Guy. It was really popular when it first came out in 1974, and the author has gotten a lot of acclaim outside this country, but its not on everybodys shelf. Another one is Ballet Shoes, by Noel Streatfield. I tried to include worthy new books, as well. My trusted advisers at Cheshire Cat bookstore in Washington, who have helped me ever since we started our club, came to my aid once again in suggesting other new books. All the books I suggest can be ordered by your bookstore.

I eliminated certain traditional classics to avoid overlap with school reading assignments. For example, Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl is the classic example of its genre, but Ive included several other diary books of which you may not be aware, such as Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution,