GatheringReaders – Book Club for Young Readers in Singapore

A little over a week ago, I initiated a book club for young readers aged 8-10 around the NTU campus and my daughters’ school mates in the fourth grade. December is a fairly relaxed time in the university with most people on leave – and my daughter’s theater and Catechism classes are over – so our Saturdays are relatively free. I figured: why not come up with a book club for young readers? Here are sections from the email blast I sent out to the NTU campus and my daughter’s classmates a week ago:

Who are Invited?
·     Young children aged 8-11 years old
·     Voracious, avid, passionate readers who devour books
·     Children with snarky commentaries about books they like (or don’t like)

What will we do?
·     Share books that we love to read
·     Do read-alouds of entire books or passages from books that moved us
·     Watch movies together
·     Talk about authors we like

Where will we meet and what time?
·     The book club is meant to run this December of 2011 in our home

What are target deliverables?
·     Apart from enjoying each other’s company, each child would be given a notebook to write down some of their thoughts about books that they like, bought/read over the week, borrowed from their libraries, and to write down their discussion notes if they so wish
·     Activities/workshops would be prepared to enhance the discussion – and documented in their notebook
·     Possible features of some of their work on http://www.GatheringBooks.org (a website on children’s literature/YA fiction) which I run.

How much will this cost me?
·     Nothing! The best things in life are free! It’s meant to be a gathering of like-minded individuals who have a passion for the written word.
·     There can be only 8-10 kids to maximize the book-sharing experience. So sign up now and register.

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I have always felt that if you give a shout-out to avid bibliophiles, they will hear the call, and they will come. And true enough, I have ten kids who signed up. For the first session, only eight kids were able to make it, since one is still out of the country, while another boy has a school project to attend to.

It was drizzling so the kids took their sweet time to slowly trickle in. I first asked them to introduce themselves by thinking of a character in a book that would best describe them.

After the introductions, I asked the kids to find a partner. They should take turns interviewing each other about their favorite book which they were asked to bring along with them.

They were each given a black notebook to write down their notes – and their task is to introduce their partner to the rest of the group.

After a few minutes of break (many thanks to the moms who brought some snacks! the homemade dip brought by Sophie and her mom was just yummylicious), the kids went on to share with the rest of the group what they have discovered about each other.

After our sharing, I told them about my plan to read chapters from Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret for each of our Saturday sessions this December. I am glad that none of them has read the book yet. I just hope that we do finish the book during our last session in December. Before reading aloud, I showed them the book trailer as can be found below:

and the movie trailer:

I just found out that the movie would only be shown here in Singapore on March 2012. How’s that for strange?

I definitely am looking forward to our second session next week. Kids, don’t forget to bring books written by your favorite authors – and your black notebooks! See you next Saturday!