Book Clubbing!: Successful Book Clubs for Young People

by Carol Littlejohn

"Book Clubbing : Successful Book Clubs for Young People" offers practical tips on creating book clubs that involve students of all ages and reading levels--including special education students, second language learners, and reluctant readers--making it easy to have fun, productive, and educational book clubs and other reading events.

The book begins with a discussion of the current research on reading and practical tips from experienced sponsors and participants, followed by suggestions on customizing book clubs to fit the students' needs and how to add "sparkle" to the club with field trips, readers theatre, guest speakers, and mystery games. The book offers a wide variety of reading activities, ensuring a dynamic, lively reading group. Numerous forms, booklists, booktalks, reading lists, and resource websites offer additional help for educators and library staff. Especially unique and valuable is the reading activities chapter that includes reproducible reading games, a readers theatre script, a folktale "rap," and various booktalks and contests.

Genres: Nonfiction

144 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 2011

Reviews

[LG (A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't read this from cover to cover, just read the bits that seemed most applicable to what I'm planning (eventually, a library book club for college students that will cost my library zero extra dollars). I realize this book is meant for book clubs aimed at kids and teens, but hey, freshman college students were recently high school students.

It's not a bad book, and the first few chapters will likely be helpful if I ever get to the point of writing a program proposal and holding the first meeting. The book also includes a bunch of activity ideas - unfortunately, most of those felt more like classroom activities (example: putting together a book trailer), while I was hoping for more free/cheap book club ideas than the three or so I've had so far (all of which this book also covered). One particularly promising chapter, "Mystery games," fell apart when I tried checking some of the URLs listed. The one site that still worked was the one that included a bunch of mystery games for purchase. While many of those sound great, my budget is $0. The other URLs didn't work at all, and the book itself doesn't include any detailed mystery game setups.

The book includes a sample literature Bingo card and "Safari Reading Game" board, plus several reproducible forms. For me, the most potentially useful are the guest speaker checklist and (with some modifications) the "reader's profile" questionnaire.

[Alicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great mix of examples, books, and breakdown about creating book clubs broken up by small children, preteen and teen. Lots of tips, tricks, and recommendations to make successful book clubs.

[Pashew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great resource for teachers and book-club managers (sponsors). Carol makes the management strategically clear and easy for a committed book clubber(S). The book cant be considered enough to run a book-club as you need a lot more readings and skills for that, but it can be one of the very much helpful resources.

[Karen Arendt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as helpful as I had hoped. While the title says for all ages, I found the activities for younger grades (2-4) difficult to accomplish in a 35-40 minute period. I will try the passport to monitor attendance, try a survey at the beginning of the club, look at the reading games.

[Melissa Wehunt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good...mostly this was full of stuff I already knew... Could of used sample questions..that what I was really looking for. I know that I should provide food, crafts, etc. How about some help with the content??

[Carlene Walter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Doesn't ask students to delve deeply into books

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting perspective. I like the author’s focus on children’s choice in reading rather than assigned books, although that seemed to fall away as the book went on. Not a ton of concrete ideas about activities for younger age groups. Still gets points from me for not having a boy section and a girl section, as the other 3 book club idea books I’ve looked at all did.