Start a Book Club With Your Teen
I didn’t want to stop.
I read to my daughter all her life, even before she became a person whom I could hold in my arms. I read Goodnight when she was in her mother’s womb, Knuffle Bunny when she was a toddler , Ramona and Beezus when she was in elementary school.
I read to her all this time because I knew it was good for her brain . Plus it was fun. And to be honest, it was something that I could do lying down, tired of nightly diaper changes, endless washing and a lot of dirty dishes.
When she was old enough to read to herself, I didn’t want our story to end. So we created a de facto book club. Reading together is different than before, but I read somewhere that everything has changed .
Now, I read with her, not to her. We no longer march through the text, grappling together at my pace, hearing dialogue in my humming voice. We move silently in different directions. Often she reads the books first and I follow. She runs through novels, completing a pack of seven novels in the same number of days. I am slower, distracted by troubles such as work. I don’t read everything she does, but every time she walks up to me with a book she just finished with her eyes wide open, I take it out of her hands in awe. Our book club is sacred to me.
Reading books in our club forces me to put my phone down and log out of Twitter. I love books for adults – I am capricious when they are not at hand. But some authors, like Jennifer Egan, make stories so powerful for me that I’m a little afraid of them. I could shut up with her entire catalog and show up a year later, looking like Tom Hanks from Exile and making riddles about the universe. But who’s going to clean the litter boxes when I’m away? A great book for the middle class or youth, fun enough to free me from the shackles of social media without overwhelming my psyche.
Then there is the idea of a book as a time machine. Coming from cover to cover, you can return at any time in your chosen story. For example, when Dumbledore is (spoiler alert!) Alive and cheerful, not dead and cheerful. The power of the book’s time machine extends to the real world. When you are absorbed in history, time stops. (If I ever end my Jennifer Egan sabbatical, I’m sure it won’t take more than a blink of an eye for a year.) And returning to the book months or years after you first read it will be a touchstone for your ex. myself. My daughter mentions this phenomenon all the time – where we lived, what age she was, what she thought, for example, when she last read “ Where the sidewalk ends” .
Most importantly, the book club gives us a real opportunity to talk. She describes herself as a “talkative person,” which is true until I ask her how her day at school went. Then she has nothing to say.
We tend to talk about books when we are on the move. On the way home from school, hiking in the woods is an activity that does not require your full attention. Our negotiations are informal. I am not asking her to explain the symbolism or justify her opinion. We walk and chat. Sometimes she just says the name of a character who has died or become evil. I know what she means. I couldn’t believe it either.
Talking about the books we read and the feelings they evoke in us helps us learn about each other. It allows me to see the person she grows into, to watch her penetrate the perspectives of the writers and characters.
Here are some quick tips if you are looking to start your own parent-child book club.
Let your child choose. If you want enthusiasm, start here. When children choose books, their reading experience is satisfied . This means that your parenting experience will be beneficial. You don’t have to pester or persuade – reading will happen naturally. The books your child chooses will tell you about their interests, what they find funny, and what they find delightfully intimidating. But if you find yourself flipping through a dozen vampire books, feel free to steer the book club in a new direction. (What about werewolves?) If you’re stumped, see below.
Use the library for both books and advice. Books are not cheap! Take advantage of the available books for the greater good. Library websites are very popular these days, allowing you to download electronic and audio books for free. If you need guidance, go in and talk to the librarians. This is especially useful in branch libraries where the pace of work is slightly slower than the central library and staff have the opportunity to meet regular visitors.
Put the classics aside. I know you can’t wait to share Little Women with your child. Little women are great. The point is that many other great books have been written over the past 150 years. My parenting experience tells me that there is no quicker way to glazed eyes than telling a story about how things used to be. (Once there were no smartphones!) Children need a little life experience, a little mundane, to understand their place in history. Until then, let them read modern books. Classics will be in English. Believe me.
Be open to new genres. I’m not fancy. I tried to love trolls and battle sprites, but stories with such characters always made me bored and confused. Fortunately, my daughter does not share my confusion. This means that my reading diet has become more varied since the founding of our book club. She is also drawn to graphic novels. Graphic novels that I’ve read have been written under the influence of comic books, but books such as El Deafo, opened my eyes to the possibility of telling stories with pictures.
Find something nice to say about every book you read. Look, I’m just going to say it. I don’t like the Percy Jackson show. I have reasons, but I’m not going to be distracted by ranting. My daughter loves Percy, and I see no reason to shit on her. The goal of this book club is to foster bonding between parents and children. So I flip through a book that I don’t like and tell her that I appreciate the way the protagonist has shown courage and learned humility. I tell her how it was creative, bringing ancient myths into the present. We all make small sacrifices to achieve big goals like family unity. She puts up with my stories about life without smartphones, which are much more boring than Percy Jackson.
Do not stop. Life will get in the way. You will have to travel to the conference. You have to spend 10 nights in a row building a PowerPoint deck. Your child will train for running three times a week. On weekends, she will take the bus to the mall with her friends. There will be a thousand reasons to disband the book club. Do not. Even if you only read one book a year together, keep reading. Read together in high school, college, and beyond. There is no reason to quit. New books are published every week. Plus, you haven’t gotten to half of the classic yet!