Book Buddies: Year 2 in Review

Another fantastic year of Book Buddies has come to a close and I wanted to take a moment to reflect back on how far we've come!

We began the year with 6 members (many returning from last year) and over the last 9 months we've seen the number grow to 16! I love that we had such a diverse group of kids and I hope we will be able to maintain that in the years to come: 9 girls and 7 boys with all five Newport public elementary schools represented as well as members from St. Michael's and Cluny. We also had one homeschooler! This kind of diversity is exactly what I hoped for with our book club - bringing together kids from varied backgrounds who might not otherwise ever meet and get to know each other. It has been wonderful to see how everyone has gotten along so well.

We read some amazing books this year beginning with Saffy's Angel by Hilary McKay in September. We read three books selected by the club members: The Demon of River Heights (Nancy Drew), The Ocean of Osyria (Hardy Boys) and So B. It. We conducted three more author interviews with Marlane Kennedy (Me and the Pumpkin Queen) in October, Nancy Springer (The Case of the Missing Marquess) in January and Sarah Weeks (So B. It) in April. The authors were fantastic and we had a wonderful time interviewing them. A big thank you to each of them for their time and their willingness to participate in our book club. It was such a thrill!

Finally, we read more widely this year than ever before! It was important to me that we branch out and read different genres and types of fiction and we did just that with mystery, fantasy, realistic fiction, two graphic novels and a novel in verse. My hope is that we will continue to try new things in the years to come.

Thank you to all of the club members who showed up each month having read the books and with an eagerness to discuss them. You are what made our book club great! I hope that all of you will return when the book club starts up again in September. It's sure to be another fantastic year of reading with more author interviews and excitement to come!

I want to also thank everyone for reading this Book Buddies Blog. I have thoroughly enjoyed writing about everything our club has been up to this year as well as posting literary-related items of interest. It's nice to know that people are out there reading this blog and paying attention to all that we are doing. I will continue to post to the blog all summer so check back for updates on summer reading 2009 and the theme "Be Creative @ Your Library!"

Have a great summer!
Cathy