March Meeting Wrap-Up

The Book Buddies Book Club met this past Monday, March 22nd, to discuss Fame and Glory in Freedom, Georgia by Barbara O'Connor. We had a terrific discussion followed by our very own spelling bee!

We began by discussing Bird, her personality and why the other kids at school gave her such a hard time. Everyone thought that Bird seemed like a nice person and even though she was a little bit different the other kids should have given her a chance. We talked about why she wanted to be Harlem's friend and about her relationship with Miss Delphine and why they got along so well. Miss Delphine always sees the good in people and she's a terrific role model for Bird. We spent a lot of time discussing the spelling bee: why Harlem agreed to be Bird's partner and what went wrong.

We talked a lot about one of the major themes of the book, that not everything or everyone is as they seem. You have to look beyond the surface of things to get to the heart of what's truly there. People can definitely surprise you. We uncovered a number of examples of this including Bird's initial idea that Mr. Moody was a mean person which she discovered was entirely untrue and that Harlem and Mr. Moody's apartment wasn't a very nice place to be (later on she says, "That room was the best place I'd ever seen in all my born days."). Another example was that Harlem pretended to be dumb at school but really he couldn't see well and needed glasses. We loved what Bird said about that at the end of the book: "I realized that all those times when he looked like he was glaring at the world out of meanness, well, he was just trying to see is all." The idea that people can definitely surprise you was a theme that we all noticed and enjoyed throughout the story.

During our talk, a few of us were brave enough to try some apple pie. We ate apple pie as a tribute to friendship since it was the dessert that Miss Delphine made for Bird to give to Harlem at the beginning of the book.

Following our discussion we had our very own spelling bee! We broke into two teams and gave our best efforts at spelling words like "appreciate" and "independence." All of our Book Buddies members did very well and everyone left with a prize for participating.

We also spent some time putting together some questions for the author, Barbara O'Connor. I had tried to arrange for a phone interview but our schedules did not allow for that. However, she graciously agreed to accept questions via email! I've emailed her our list of questions and will post as soon as I hear back!

It was a terrific meeting and thanks to all the Book Buddies members who attended!