The Book Club Blog

The Book Club is a place where kids can share what they are reading.

Today we asked the question to seven 5th grade boys:
What is the best book you ever read? What book was your least favorite? We had some interesting answers.

Kellen: The best book I ever read was Harry Potter #2 (Chamber of Secrets) It was suspenseful and draws you in. I also loved Stoneheart. It was a great fantasy book. My least favorite book so far has been The Wizard Heir – I think it was confusing and I had a hard time following it.

William: My favorite book has been Harry Potter #4 (The goblet of fire). There was a lot of suspense and I loved the wizard competition. The worst book I read was Pride & Prejudice – it put me to sleep.

Eric: I’m a big fan of the Wimpy Kid books – so my favorite has to be “Dog Days” I love the cartoons and the writing. I didn’t like Harry Potter #4 so much – it was too long for me. Books with over 300 pages just seem too long.

Bill: I love “The Lightning Thief”. It starts off with a bang and it the kind of book that makes you want to keep reading. I also really liked “Call Me Hope” I think my least favorite book is Lunch Money by Andrew Clements. I have enjoyed all of his other books, but for some reason, this book was hard to get into, and didn't hold my interest.

Kyle: I loved “The Lightning Thief” too. I also really liked “The 39 Clues” It was action packed and the characters went on like a scavenger hunt – it was suspenseful and kept you interested. I didn’t like the Animorphs books. I had read enough alien books and these just didn’t interest me.

Jacob: I really like the Captain Fact books. He’s like a superhero and it is fun and easy to read. I’m also someone that didn’t really like the Animorph books – they just didn’t capture my attention.

Brian: I love to read Garfield. They are funny and I like the characters of Garfield and Odie. I didn’t really like the book “Warcraft” I thought it was kind of disgusting.

The Book Club is a place where kids can share what they are reading. Have you recently read a book that you can’t put down? Or was the last book you read a real snoozer and was too boring to finish? We want to hear your opinions!  Share with us what you are reading – and why you would recommend (or not recommend) this book to other kids!  

Happy Reading!
The Book Lady

The “Twilight” series 
Appropriate for elementary school readers? 

The 5^th grade book club had a lively discussion this week about the “Twilight” series by Stephenie Meyer. Of the 5 girls participating, (Nina, Lizzy, Sarah, Daniella, and Abby) all of the girls had seen the Twilight movie and read the book Twilight – most of them had read all 4 books in the series! My original feeling regarding the series was that it was more appropriate for middle school and high school readers.  The phenomenal popularity of the vampire books have caught the attention of even younger readers and now is starting to “trickle down” to elementary school. 

 I am a big fan of the series, having read each of the four books several times so I was eager to hear the groups’ perspective.  

The main points of concern were the teenage “passion” between the main character, Bella and her vampire boyfriend Edward.  Although fairly chaste, the books do describe romantic encounters between the two teenagers, although it limits the physical contact to kissing and embraces.  The writing is more romantic than graphic and the author is careful to limit the intensity  between Bella & Edward until Book 4 – (Breaking Dawn) after the two are married, and even then, it is not very descriptive.

The girls did not feel that the book was too mature for their age  (one commented “We’ve seen worse on TV)  

Another area of concern is violence – there are some fairly descriptive passages in some of the books encountering battles between the werewolves and vampires.  Book one ends with a dismantling of an evil vampire, and a group of vampires, “The Volturi” are particularly eerie.  The girls did say that they were a little “creeped out” by some of the more graphic passages, but felt the violence was pretty mild and that video games were more violent (one said, “it was scary – but fun scary – not nightmare scary”) 

So – after our conversation – and based on how passionately the girls loved the books (there were boys that also have read the books and loved them – we hope to have a round-table with them soon) I will recant and say that there are some elementary school kids that can handle “Twilight”

 I think it is for a parent to decide if they feel their child is mature enough to handle the themes in the book.  I would not recommend them to ages below 10 – so 4^th graders should wait a year or two.

The Twilight books – the series of 4 – are a total of 2,560 pages of reading – so for those of you that haven’t read them yet and want to take a “bite” out of a wonderful series – here’s to Happy Reading!

The Book Lady