October Meeting Wrap-Up

The Book Buddies Book Club met yesterday afternoon to discuss our October book, The Ghost, The White House and Me by Judith St. George. We had a great discussion, enjoyed some Halloween cupcakes and finished up with a pumpkin craft!

Everyone really enjoyed the book and found it to be a spooky story perfect for Halloween. We all thought that KayKay was a really interesting main character and liked that she was an adventurous person who appreciated a good mystery (like so many of us!)

In the story, KayKay mother has just been sworn in as President of the United States and we spent some time discussing the idea of a female president. We all thought it was very exciting to think that a woman could be president and we feel confident that it's an event that will happen in the near future. We liked that the author chose to write the story this way instead of having KayKay's dad be President, and we especially liked that it was just another fact of the story and not the main focus of the story. We talked about how the story would have been different if it were KayKay's dad who was President and felt that it would have been a dramatic change, since one of the driving features of the story was KayKay's mom being so busy as President and not as available to her kids.

We discussed what it would be like to live in the White House and have our own secret service agents following us around all day long. Most thought it would be sort of cool to live in the White House but like anything else, there would be pros (Chef Toni's cooking!) and cons (no privacy).

We spent quite a bit of time talking about the idea that the White House is haunted, an idea that persists in real life, not just in the story. We read from the non-fiction book Who's Haunting the White House? by Jeff Belanger about some of the ghostly happenings that have be reported in the White House especially all of the ghost stories surrounding Abraham Lincoln and his ghost. We talked about KayKay's dad's idea that the White House is haunted by history and how that might be. There is so much history here in New England, we talked about the ghosts that might be around Newport and how Newport might be haunted by history as well.

We discussed KayKay's relationship with Borden, the former President's grandson, and how it changed over the course of the story. In the beginning, KayKay didn't really like Borden but she also didn't really know him. As the story progressed, she realized that Borden was actually a pretty interesting person and they became good friends.

We also talked about the prank KayKay and Annie played and how it went wrong and how they were punished.

Overall we all really liked The Ghost, The White House and Me and we are looking forward to reading more from Judith St. George!

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