A blog post by Laura Yoo

BOYS’ BOOK CLUB (Photo included with parents’ permission)

“My favorite part of the book was when James’s parents died!” my 9-year old son Sammy yelled. And everyone around the table yelled back, “What? Oh my God! Why?” He had a perfectly reasonable response: “Because! That’s what made the whole story possible!”

Five 9-year old boys sat around the kitchen table at the home of Brooke Dalesio on a gorgeous, sunny April afternoon talking about Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach.  School had gotten out three hours early, and the five boys were invited to the first installment of the Boys’ Book Club organized by Brooke for her son Nate and four of his friends. Brooke is a reading specialist who currently works with education majors at University of Maryland College Park, supervising their student teaching.  She also works with the reading team as a Title 1 reading tutor at the five boys’ school, Longfellow Elementary in Howard County, Maryland.

Back in February, when Brooke texted me with, “I have a crazy idea that I thought we could do together,” I responded with, “I’m scared.”  She proposed to host a book club for a few of Nate’s friends, including Sammy.  After a few more text messages back and forth about the logistics, I answered the call with “What the hell! Let’s try it!”

At first, Sammy wasn’t so sure.  I guess he just didn’t know what to expect.  He asked, “Is it like school work?  It sounds like school work.” I assured him that it’d be EVEN MORE FUN than school work.  Brooke got the ball rolling by emailing the moms, and Sammy started reading James and the Giant Peach. He loved it right away.  When he was finished, he handed it to me (I had not yet read the book) and moved onto Fantastic Mr. Fox.  He was counting the days til the first book club meeting.  (I cheated by listening to the audio book of James and the Giant Peach, which I highly recommend, by the way.)

For the first book club meeting, Brooke offered fresh peach slices and peach smoothies for snack. They also munched on peach flavored gummy snacks that Sammy and I found at Lotte. While the boys enjoyed their snacks, they started the meeting by sharing general impressions of the book. They kept raising their hands – just like in school – instead of having a conversation. But that was okay – they’d need practice.

They took turns picking discussion questions that Brooke had prepared.  The boys got a kick out of the question asking them to find “juicy words” from the book.  They loved “ghastly,” “mammoth,” “frantically,” “brute,” and “peculiar.” (Later, one of the boys used “peculiar” in his sentence, just casually throwing it in there as if he’d always known that word.) Brooke told them about British English versus American English, and we listened to a short clip of the audio book on my phone so we could hear the accent.  Other questions asked about their favorite characters, how James changes throughout the book, and about the role of magic in this fantasy novel.  My favorite question, though, asked the boys to imagine other ways that James and his friends could have gotten out of some of the sticky situations during their adventures, because it encouraged creative problem solving.

After the discussion, the boys created a storyboard of the novel using a long piece of paper Brooke had prepared.  They had to decide how to break up the story and how they’d represent the important events in the book.  This part got a little hairy and Brooke and I offered some suggestions, but we let them sort it out.  (Brooke, by the way, is much better at letting them be than I am. I’m, shall we say, much more “hands on.”) And of course they did a fantastic job.

Brooke did the facilitating, and I enjoyed my peach smoothie and observed with fascination.  I loved the level of energy in the room. The boys were excited to talk and to share their ideas.  Sure, they all got a bit silly at times.  Occasionally, one of them would get up and walk around the room – or dance.  They talked on top of each other.  Sometimes they got excited and yelled. Still, Brooke kept her cool and steered the group back to the table and back to the book.  Other times, she just let them get their energy out for a minute or two.  I was impressed. This was a serious level up from “playdate.”

The boys agreed on The BFG for their next book club meeting, which will be in June.  After the official book club meeting was adjourned, the little literary scholars dashed outside to play basketball and soccer in the sun while enjoying peach flavored ice pops.

“It was awesome,” Sammy said to me as we left Nate’s house. He cannot wait til June.  I joined my first book club when I was 38 years old, so clearly Sammy is getting a serious head start thanks to Ms. Brooke’s “crazy idea” that turned out to be quite awesome.

Laura Yoo
HoCoPoLitSo Board member and Professor of English at Howard Community College.