Monday, April 8, 2013

Book Clubbing!


Littlejohn, Carol. Book Clubbing!: Successful Book Clubs for Young People. Santa Barbara, CA: Linworth, 2011. ISBN: 978-1-58683-415-9

Publisher's Description
This practical guide demonstrates how to sponsor a successful, student-led book club for grades K through 12 that is fun, easy-to-implement, and encourages reading.

Establishing a book club for children and young people that's self-sustaining and successful long-term is a challenge that this book addresses and conquers. According to recent research, allowing young people to choose their reading material, environment, and activity can make the vital difference in establishing a lifelong reading habit.

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.

Features
• Bibliographic lists of works cited after each chapter
• An index of authors, titles, and reading activities by age
• Figures are included with selected activities and reading games

Highlights
• Provides strategies for addressing the issue of waning enthusiasm for reading activities in older students
• Stresses the importance of giving students freedom to choose their reading materials and encouraging them to share their reading with others
• Offers assistance for starting book clubs with young people in hospitals, community centers, public libraries, bookstores as well as school libraries