January Meeting Wrap-Up

The Book Buddies Book Club met yesterday afternoon to discuss our January book, The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook by Eleanor Davis. We had our biggest turn-out yet and everyone really enjoyed the book!

We began by talking about our overall impressions and it turns out that everybody really likes reading graphic novels! The fact that this was a graphic novel automatically made it a winner. Beyond that we all liked reading about the mystery and the inventions that the Alliance came up with.

We discussed the main characters, Julian, Ben and Greta and how they were all very different and what made them such good friends. We agreed that Julian's strategy of pretending to be dumb to try and fit in at his new school was not a good idea because it's important that you be honest about who you really are. By being yourself you never know who you might meet and become friends with and by lying about who you really are, you are only hurting yourself. Plus it can be very difficult to maintain a lie like that and if and when the truth comes out it would make it very hard for people to trust you again.

We talked about Ben and Greta's secret laboratory and why they invited Julian to be apart of it. Ben and Greta felt that Julian was smart and trustworthy and would be able to help them with their inventions.

Julian idolized fellow inventor Dr. Stringer and when he and his mom went to hear Dr. Stringer speak Julian wanted to talk with him afterwards. We talked about what happened, how Dr. Stringer dismissed him as a child and accused him of coping the inventions in his notebook from someone else. This led to a discussion of being disappointed by people we idolize and how those situations have made us feel.

We talked about the importance of confidence in life and in science and why Ben is always so down on himself. We concluded by talking about how the Alliance was able to stop Dr. Stringer from stealing Kablovsky's thinking cap from the Museum.

Everyone really enjoyed reading The Secret Science Alliance and had a lot of great ideas for their own inventions. A few club members wanted to create a homework machine and a machine that would do chores for them. Other invention ideas included a teleporter, miniature submarine, super sky scraper, robot guard and an earth core rover.

Other favorite graphic novels members have read include the Warriors series, Babymouse and the Nancy Drew & Hardy Boys mysteries among others.

Following our discussion we each tried our hand at creating our own graphic novels using the wonderful templates provided by Enchanted Learning.

Overall it was a terrific meeting and thanks to all the Book Buddies members who came out! See you in February!