Girls Book Club

Two Writing Teachers

Girls' Book Club

My own children do not like to read...there- I said it! As a reading specialist, it breaks my heart, but I still make them read while bribing them. Last year, I started a girls' book club for my daughter and her friends. It was easy to find a book because I knew The Giver was going to be coming out as a movie in August, so The Giver was the obvious choice. We met three times over the summer, once in June, once in July and again on the opening night of the movie. For each meeting, the girls brought their books and I led the discussion of the assigned chapters. Several moms joined the group and were happy to have shared reading time with their daughters. I was very impressed with the girls discoveries and their thoughts about the plot and characters. I thought that our discussion would last 10-15 minutes, then we'd have a snack and the girls would play. This was not the case, the girls talked for hours about the book. I even hung large post- it notes in my dining room, where the girls added their favorite part, drew a picture or asked questions. They loved it! My daughter who was of course embarrassed about the whole thing, at first was peer pressured into reading the book, but ended up loving it. The night of movie release, we went to a local Chinese restaurant, discussed the ending of the book, and then went to see the movie. After the movie, we stood in the lobby for a long time as the girls discussed what they liked and what they were disappointed about in the movie vs. the book. I tweeted about the experience to Walden Publishing (they produced the movie) and they actually retweeted my post with the girls' picture. They girls were so excited! This summer, we are reading The Westing Game... I am hoping for a repeat of the excitement of last year.

@WaldenMedia #summerbookclub dinner and a movie #TheGiverMovie #tweens pic.twitter.com/lnLSnX6fbB

— Jenny Douglas (@douglasj22) August 18, 2014

The ring!

On July 11, 2015, my husband and I celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary. This year was a much happier celebration than last year. Last year we went on a cruise- that should be a happy occassion- right? The night before the cruise we stayed at my sister-in-laws house in Myrtle Beach. The next morning, we got up and were so excited to drive to Charleston to get on the boat. As we were boarding the ship, I noticed that my wedding ring and wrap were not on my finger. I only had my wedding band on. This was strange to me because when I take off my rings to clean or wash dishes, etc, I take them all off.  We were franticly backtracking our steps but didn't have much time because we had to board the ship. I called my neighbor to look at our house, but she did not see my rings.  Several weeks ago my sister-in-law found the wrap on the floor while she was cleaning the Myrtle Beach house, so now only the diamond engagement ring was missing. This year on our annual trip to Myrtle Beach, we were excited to get the house for many reasons, one being a search for the diamond ring.  As soon as we got to the house, we opened up the pull out sleeper sofa bed. Why the couch? Because Rob (dear hubby) had a dream that his mom who passed 5 years ago, told him it was in the couch. Guess what!!!! We found it. The crazy thing is that the mattress in the sofa bed is tightly wrapped in plastic from the manufacturer. How could my ring have wiggled it's way in there? I don't know, but I am happy to have my ring back and I am happy that Gladys still has words of wisdom for us.