This year two of my favorite book bloggers, Jessica from Quirky Bookworm and Sheila from The Deliberate Reader started a joint online book club. Every two months, the group will explore a different part of the world through children's literature with a book aimed at each reading level from picture books to young adult. It was perfect timing for me, since as the boys have become such strong independent readers, I found that I wasn't reading aloud to them as much as we had before.
January and February are all about the Arctic and it has been so much fun to talk about a whole new part of the world with the kids. The picture book was In Arctic Waters by Laura Crawford and Ben Hudson, which was adorable. The elementary aged chapter book The Year of Miss Agnes by Kirkpatrick Hill was really fun to read aloud. The YA book is Julie of Wolves by Jean Craighead George. Short chapters told from a child's perspective sparked so many great questions from the boys. We looked Alaska up on our globe, talked about the roles of men and women in the past (they were both very happy that girls can wear pants now...can you tell we read that during a particularly cold part of February? Ha!) and talked about what it would feel like to go to a one-room schoolhouse. Not only did I get my snuggly read aloud time back, but the level of discussion between the three of us was new and really cool for me.
Discussion as a group is centered on the book club's Facebook page (join here!) and there is a blog linkup once a month on Sheila, Jessica and the guest host's blogs (the Arctic has been guest hosted by Carrie from The Lion is a Bookworm). The hosts try to post a question a few times a week on the Facebook group, so feel free to jump in where you are.
And for March and April, that guest host is ME! We'll be reading books set in South Korea-which is such a perfect fit. For newer readers of this blog, both my children are adopted from South Korea, and so we do as much as we can to incorporate and learn about their culture. Books have always been one of our favorite ways to do this, but I'll also blog a bit about things like holidays...and of course food!
Later this week I'll share the books we'll be reading over the course of my guest hosting and once March gets rolling I'll share more of my favorite books in each category.
In the meantime, join us in the Facebook group and use the hashtag #rtfebc on social media!
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