Book Group Guidelines:

 

1. We will meet once a month after school in the library. Each person will bring in at least two questions or meaningful quotations or points of interest either good or bad from the book to share with the group for discussion.
2. We do not all have to agree, but we do have to respect everyone's ideas, thoughts, and feelings about issues discussed in the book group.
3. Books are on hold at the Public Library.

 

 

 

 

Book Selections:

 

 

October : Biography

 

This gripping story by a children's-rights advocate recounts his experiences as a boy growing up in Sierra Leone in the 1990s, during one of the most brutal and violent civil wars in recent history. Beah, a boy equally thrilled by causing mischief as by memorizing passages from Shakespeare and dance moves from hip-hop videos, was a typical precocious 12-year-old. But rebel forces destroyed his childhood innocence when they hit his village, driving him to leave his home and travel the arid deserts and jungles of Africa. After several months of struggle, he was recruited by the national army, made a full soldier and learned to shoot an AK-47, and hated everyone who came up against the rebels. The first two thirds of his memoir are frightening: how easy it is for a normal boy to transform into someone as addicted to killing as he is to the cocaine that the army makes readily available. But an abrupt change occurred a few years later when agents from the United Nations pulled him out of the army and placed him in a rehabilitation center. Anger and hate slowly faded away, and readers see the first glimmers of Beah's work as an advocate.

 

 Does this title remind you of any other book?

 

 

 November: Historical Fiction

 

Gatsby's Girl by Caroline Preston

 

 

Before he wrote some of the twentieth centurys greatest fiction, before he married Zelda, F. Scott Fitzgerald loved Ginevra, a fickle, young, Chicago socialite he met during a winter break from Princeton. After an ardent correspondence and one ill-fated visit, Ginevra threw over the soon-to-be-famous novelist with "supreme boredom and indifference," as Fitzgerald would later write. The rest is literary history: Ginevra would be the model for many of Fitzgeralds coolly fascinating but unattainable heroines, including Isabelle in This Side of Paradise and the elusive object of Gatsbys unrequited love, Daisy Buchanan. In this entertaining and moving novel, Caroline Preston imagines what life might have been like for Fitzgeralds first love, following Ginevra from her gilded youth as the daughter of a tycoon and through a disillusioned marriage and motherhood.

 

Does this title remind you of any other book?

 

December: Graphic Novel

 

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

As alienated kids go, Jin Wang is fairly run-of-the-mill: he eats lunch by himself in a corner of the schoolyard, gets picked on by bullies and jocks and develops a sweat-inducing crush on a pretty classmate. And, oh, yes, his parents are from Taiwan. This much-anticipated, affecting story about growing up different is more than just the story of a Chinese-American childhood; it's a fable for every kid born into a body and a life they wished they could escape. The fable is filtered through some very specific cultural icons: the much-beloved Monkey King, a figure familiar to Chinese kids the world over, and a buck-toothed amalgamation of racist stereotypes named Chin-Kee. Jin's hopes and humiliations might be mirrored in Chin-Kee's destructive glee or the Monkey King's struggle to come to terms with himself, but each character's expressions and actions are always perfectly familiar. True to its origin as a Web comic, this story's clear, concise lines and expert coloring are deceptively simple yet expressive. Even when Yang slips in an occasional Chinese ideogram or myth, the sentiments he's depicting need no translation. Yang accomplishes the remarkable feat of practicing what he preaches with this book: accept who you are and you'll already have reached out to others.

 

 

  Does this title remind you of any other book?

 

March: Non-Fiction

 

A Death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger

 

 

Bessie Goldberg was strangled to death in her home in Belmont, a Boston suburb, in March of 1963-right in the middle of the Boston Strangler's killing spree. Her death has not usually been associated with the other Strangler killings because Roy Smith, a black man who was working in Goldberg's house that day, was convicted of her murder on strong circumstantial evidence. But another man was working in Belmont that day: Albert DeSalvo, who later confessed to being the Boston Strangler, was doing construction work in the home of Junger's parents (the author himself was a baby). Could DeSalvo have slipped away and killed Bessie Goldberg? Junger's taut narrative makes dizzying hairpin turns as he considers all the evidence for, and against, Smith or DeSalvo being Goldberg's killer; he also reviews the more familiar case for and against DeSalvo being the Strangler-for there are serious questions about his confession.

 

  Does this title remind you of any other book?

 

 

May: Short Stories/Fantasy

Black Juice by Margo Lanagan

Every selection in this rich collection is strange and startling, a glimpse into weird, wondrous, and sometimes terrifying worlds. "Singing My Sister Down," "House of the Many," and "Earthly Uses" use the death of a character to illustrate the trajectory that grief gives to those who surround those characters. In "Sweet Pippit," a group of elephants break from captivity to rescue the one human who can lead and love them. "Wooden Bride" centers on Matty Weir and her decision to change herself forever by participating in her town's anonymous group marriage ceremony, providing a sly, unconventional commentary on today's consumer-heavy wedding culture. "Red Nose Day" provides a glimpse into the hearts of two assassins who are killing clowns. "Yowlinin" is a story of ostracism and disaster; an outcast girl warns of a plague but is unheeded, with catastrophic results. The 10 stories all hover near a 20-page range. Lanagan uses beautiful, lyrical language to tell peculiar, disturbing tales. This collection may need some introduction, and would work especially well in a classroom setting; it is full of teachable moments. The selections are subtle and scary, and are remarkably different from most short stories aimed at teens. This book will satisfy readers hungry for intelligent, literary fantasies that effectively twist facets of our everyday world into something alien.

 

Does this title remind you of any other book?

 

June: Student Choice: please list suggestions 

 

 

Last Meeting: Party

Any summer reading suggestions?

 

 

*All summaries are from amazon.com