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Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
How Ten Busy Mothers and Daughters Came Together to Talk, Laugh and Learn Through Their Love of Reading
by Shireen Dodson, Teresa BarkerMothers will find a hopeful antidote to depression, eating disorders, self-destructive behavior and other problems facing adolescent girls. Most important, The Mother-Daughter Book Club shows that reading, learning and spending time together helps girls build self-esteem.
Combining the practical with the personal, The Mother-Daughter Book Club tells the story of 10 mothers and their preteen daughters and how their relationships were enriched through a monthly reading club. With step-by-step guidelines, stories, anecdotes, reading lists, sample themes and related activities, it offers practical instructions for starting a book club while encouraging mothers and daughters to learn to talk openly with one another.
At a key stage of their daughter's development, mothers will find a hopeful antidote to depression, eating disorders, self-destructive behavior and other problems facing adolescent girls. Most important, The Mother-Daughter Book Club shows that reading, learning and spending time together helps girls build self-esteem.
With suggested reading lists from authors and experts ranging from Kaye Gibbons, Joyce Carol Oates and Tipper Gore to Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Beth Winship and Ann Martin, The Mother-Daughter Book Club has the potential to inspire whole networks of reading clubs nationwide.
Introduction
I'll never forget the day I found out I was pregnant for the first time or saw the first ultrasound of my baby. It seemed so surreal. When you realize that there is actually a human being growing inside you, one that you helped create--and will now have to shape into a thinking, feeling person--it's completely overpowering. The cycle of life is intrinsic to nature, something that occurs every day, but there's nothing ordinary about it when it is happening to you--the feeling is awe-inspiring.
And then comes the day you feel your baby moving inside you for the first time. It's exciting, it's a little strange, and it's also a bit scary--for this is the moment when it becomes real. Suddenly, all your fantasies about what your child will be like are replaced by the realities of the responsibility you are about to undertake, and the looming questions about how to nurture and raise this new little person.
Nothing changes your life more than the birth of your first ...
Jim Trelease, author of The Read-Aloud Handbook
The Mother-Daughter Book Club is an idea that is so wonderful, so full of commonsense goodness, why has it taken so long for it to be born? This could easily be the catalyst for a national movement. Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia
This is a book that was waiting to be born, and angel book sent to give mothers and daughters hope. The Mother-Daughter Book Club is about community, about adults supporting each other and helping other people's children. It's about communicating values to children in ways that work. It will help mothers and daughters connect in new ways and save many Ophelias from drowning.
If you liked The Mother-Daughter Book Club, try these:
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting a Reading Group
by Patrick Sauer
Published 1999
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting a Reading Group is every book lover's guide to putting together a group and having successful discussions -- or knowing where to find an existing group.
by Erica Bauermeister
Published 1994
Covering a wealth of remarkable novels, narratives, biographies, and more, this resource for general readers offers more than 500 entries--capturing the flavor of each book. Includes seven cross-referenced indexes.
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The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl
by Bart Yates
A saga spanning 12 significant days across nearly 100 years in the life of a single man.
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Smothermoss by Alisa Alering
A haunting, imaginative, and twisting tale of two sisters and the menacing, unexplained forces that threaten them and their rural mountain community.