We began with our lightning round trivia in which everyone did a great job! I am always amazed at how many details are remembered when we do the lightning trivia. Sometimes I ask for general, obvious things (like "What is the name of the town in which Ben spends the summer?" - answer: Buttonville) and sometimes I ask about something more obscure (for example: "What is the first thing to know in Dr. Woo's Guide to Catching a Sasquatch?" - answer: "the Sasquatch is not as stupid as it looks")... and there's always at least one person who gets it right! Very impressive.
Following the trivia round we began our book discussion by talking about Ben and our first impressions of him and his summer in Buttonville. We agreed that Ben seemed like a shy kid but also a nice kid and that at first it seemed like his summer was going to be really boring.
We talked about his friendship with Pearl and why a lot of the adults in Buttonville think she is a troublemaker. We all felt that it wasn't fair that she was thought of as a troublemaker because she never intended to cause any trouble. She always had good intentions it was just that sometimes she made bad decisions and things didn't work out well for her.
We discussed Ben finding the baby wyvern and how much he wanted to keep it. We agreed that it would be impossible for Ben to keep the wyvern but we were all curious about how it is doing now, back in the imaginary world. We thought that Ben was right to go to Pearl with it instead of going to his grandfather because his grandfather would never understand and might decide to bring it to the police.
Ben and Pearl were very brave to search for the Sasquatch on their own and we were mixed about whether or not we thought they would be successful in the search (when we were reading that part of the story). The Sasquatch is so tall and weighs over 450 pounds and is very hard to catch. We weren't sure two kids were up to the challenge but they managed to pull it off!
We found Dr. Woo's Sasquatch Catching Kit to be very useful but felt that it should have contained much more chocolate (the Sasquatch's favorite food) and should have included a second fog bomb, more tranquilizers and a cart to bring the Sasquatch back in.
One of Ben's habits is telling stories and we spent some time discussing the difference between "telling stories" and "lying." We felt that, although it is a fine line, the main difference is that it is lying if you are trying to get out of or get away with something.
We all thought that Ben and Pearl would be terrific apprentice's at Dr. Woo's worm hospital and that Ben will visit Buttonville often after he goes back to Los Angeles so that he can continue apprenticing as much as possible.
Other creatures we think Ben and Pearl might encounter from the imaginary world include dragons, fairies, unicorns, the cyclops, the yeti and the Abominable Snowman.
Overall we all really liked the book and would definitely recommend it to our friends!
Following our book discussion we drew mysterious creatures including the Sasquatch, Loch Ness monster and the Phoenix on scratch & sketch paper. All of the drawings came out really well and none of them were traced! I wish I had taken pictures to post on the blog. They really all came out incredibly well.
It was an excellent meeting and I look forward to seeing everyone again in February!
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