Program: beTWEEN the lines

At the beginning of April, I hosted the second installment of my new tween only book club. For the April meeting, we read The City of Ember by Jeanne Duprau. I had five kids signed up for the club; only two showed up. However, one had come to the first meeting as well, so she is definitely invested in this group. She is a very enthusiastic participant as well. My other attendee was a boy, which I was thrilled about. However, he was, perhaps, a little overzealous - or perhaps just over-caffeinated. Once again, the kids were very eager to talk about the book and had a lot of opinions about how terrible the mayor was and how they would feel if they were in Lina or Doon's place. But, there were a number of times when my male attendee went off on a tangent and ignored my attempts to rein him in. As of the end of the April meeting, he was planning to attend again in May, so I will have to work on some behavior management strategies between now and then. We shared some snacks again and participated in Career Day - we drew for potential careers in Ember. Nobody was happy with what they chose, so we talked about how hard it must be to be randomly assigned a job you have no interest in. I closed our discussion with wondering what items we might put in a time capsule for people 200 years in the future to find - which led them to talk about what they thought 200 years in the future might look like (hint: you will be able to start fires with your mind and without ever burning yourself). They both loved the book and were disappointed to see that the sequel was already checked out. After the summer, I need to try to figure out a way to get more kids attending - I think a bigger group would be even more fun.