Sad Day

Today is a sorrowful day.  It is the day I have to announce the end of the Mother/Daughter Book Clubs.  I've had a lot of fun with the club and I'm sad to see it go, but due to lack of interest and some other concerns, it will be ending. 

Thank you to everyone who participated, and made this a great experience.  I loved getting to know both the moms and the girls and I hope you will visit me at the Washington Branch.

There is a ray of sunshine, though.  There is the possibility of the club starting again at a later date. I'll let you know if that happens. 

Thanks again for everything.

Gloria

Attention!

We have a meeting time!  The meeting will be at 5:00 pm August 22 at the Washington Branch.  The address for that branch is 220 North 300 East, Washington, Utah.  I know this is kind of short notice, but I hope you will be able to make it.  Let me know if you have any questions. 

Gloria

Changes!

I just looked at the blog and realized how long it's been since I've posted anything.  I really hope you will forgive me for not keeping this blog as current as usual.  With Summer Reading, the flood and *surprise*  my new promotion to Children's Librarian at the Washington City Branch (this just happened today) it's been pretty crazy lately. 

This is to let you know the Mother Daughter Book Club will be moving with me to the Washington City Library.  We will also have to start a little earlier because the Washington Branch closes earlier than the St. George Branch.  I will let you know exactly what time when I am able to finalize some things.  Plan for about 5:00 or 6:00 starting time.  We will discuss a more permanent meeting time when we see each other again, so ask any of your interested friends what time they'd like to meet!

We had to have our last meeting in the children's area because of the flooding downstairs, but We made it work.  For our craft we made mini bubble magnets.  We even ran out of glue, we made so many. :) 

Our next meeting will be on August 22 and don't forget it will be at the Washington Branch.  The book is the first book in the Sister's Grimm Series, The Fairy-Tale Detectives.

I'll see you at the Washington Branch!

Gloria

Dream Catchers

I had one of the Mom's email me pictures of the finished dream catchers they made.  They turned out great so I thought I would share them with you.  Thanks for the pictures Diane!

 

Update

I know it's been a while.  I haven't been able to keep up with the blog like usual because of the summer reading program.  It's been taking a lot of time.  Hopefully I will be able to keep up a bit better with the blog from now on.

I did want to quickly post a little bit about the meeting we had on Wednesday.  We made dream catchers for the craft.  The book centered on dreams so much, I thought it would be fun.  They were made out of plastic cup rims (18 oz), string, and yarn then decorated with beads and feathers.  We didn't have time to finish them, so I wasn't able to get any pictures like I wanted to, but the ones the girls were making were turning out really well.  We got so involved with the craft that we didn't have time to discuss the book very much.

The next book for the book club is The Wish Giver by Bill Brittain.  It's about three children who each have one wish.  They can wish for anything they want.  What would you wish for?

Get Talking: A Wrinkle In Time

A little overdue, but here are a few questions to get you talking about A Wrinkle In Time.

A Wrinkle In Time is very much a novel about good vs. evil. Who in the book represents good? Who represents evil?

At the beginning of the book, Meg isn't happy with who she is.  Have you ever felt like that?  Have you ever wanted to be just like everyone else?

What makes Charles Wallace so extraordinary. How do these traits both hurt and help him on Camazotz?

If you had the opportunity to time travel, would you? If you could chose the time, what time period would you travel to? The past? The future?

Why does the school principal, Mr. Jenkins, want Meg to accept that her father is never coming home? Should Meg believe him? Why? Why not?

How is Calvin’s home life different from Meg’s? How is his school life different from Meg’s?

How would you react if you were taken on a surprise journey to another planet?

Who are some of the famous people mentioned as fighting the Dark Thing? What do they all have in common?

Charles Wallace says that they can’t make decisions based on fear. Do you agree?

What does Meg have that IT doesn’t have? Is this something she can use in other situations? If so, how?

Book Blurb: A Wrinkle In Time

"It was a dark and stormy night." 
Meg Murry, her little brother Charles Wallace, and their mother are having a midnight snack on a dark and stormy night when an unearthly stranger appears at their door. She claims to have been blown off course, and goes on to tell them that there is such a thing as a “tesseract,” which, if you didn’t know, is a wrinkle in time.
Meg’s father had been experimenting with time-travel when he suddenly disappeared. Will Meg, Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin outwit the forces of evil as they search through space for their father?


About the Author

Madeleine was born on November 29th, 1918, and spent her formative years in New York City. Instead of her school work, she found that she would much rather be writing stories, poems and journals for herself, which was reflected in her grades (not the best). However, she was not discouraged.
At age 12, she moved to the French Alps with her parents and went to an English boarding school where, thankfully, her passion for writing continued to grow. She flourished during her high school years back in the United States at Ashley Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, vacationing with her mother in a rambling old beach cottage on a beautiful stretch of Florida Beach.
She went to Smith College and studied English with some wonderful teachers as she read the classics and continued her own creative writing. She graduated with honors and moved into a Greenwich Village apartment in New York. She worked in the theater, where Equity union pay and a flexible schedule afforded her the time to write! She published her first two novels during these years—A Small Rain and Ilsa—before meeting Hugh Franklin, her future husband, when she was an understudy in Anton Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard. They married during The Joyous Season.

She had a baby girl and kept on writing, eventually moving to Connecticut to raise the family away from the city in a small dairy farm village with more cows than people. They bought a dead general store, and brought it to life for 9 years. They moved back to the city with three children, and Hugh revitalized his professional acting career.
As the years passed and the children grew, Madeleine continued to write and Hugh to act, and they to enjoy each other and life. Madeleine began her association with the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, where she was  the librarian and maintained an office for more than thirty years. After Hugh’s death in 1986, it was her writing and lecturing that kept her going. She lived through the 20th century and into the 21st and wrote over 60 books. She enjoyed being with her friends, her children, her grandchildren, and her great grandchildren.

Taken from http://www.madeleinelengle.com/

Meeting Musings: Beauty

I love the book Beauty by Robin McKinley.  It's been one of my favorites for many years.  I was really excited to share this book with everyone, even though is was a bit longer than most of the books we read.  Unfortunately we got so caught up in the craft we didn't talk about the book as much as I would have liked.  Of course, I could talk about it for days, so maybe it was just right for a normal person.

The flowers we made were quick and easy and turned out very cute.  Everyone had time to make several flowers before we had to go.  Here is the link to the instructions.
http://www.infarrantlycreative.net/2011/10/how-to-make-felt-flowers.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+InfarrantlyCreative+%28infarrantly+creative%29

We ended up using hot glue instead of the suggested Fabri-Tac.  Aleene's craft glue works, too, but takes awhile to dry.  There were a lot of creative changes to the basic pattern for the flower.  One of the mom's added a ring of green around the base for leaves, one girl made her flower petals longer by making the original cut wider, and someone glued two pieces of felt together for a two-tone flower.  Everyone left with even more ideas on how to make the flowers their own.

Our next book is A Wrinkle In Time by Madeline L'Engle.  It's another really good book, plus, it's the book's 50th anniversary this year.  A perfect time to read it, right?

The meeting for the book is going to be on May 23, 2012 at 7:00 pm.  I hope to see you there!

Gloria

Creative Crafting: Beauty

If you've been reading, you have probably notices Beauty loves roses.  I wanted to incorporate that into our craft this month.  I thought it would be fun if we made flowers.  There are dozens of ways you can do this and after researching, I found some cute, easy to make felt flowers.  Here is the example I made:

I'll have several colors of felt, plus there are a couple of variations on the original pattern.  I hope to see you at the meeting tomorrow!

Gloria

Get Talking: Beauty

I hope you are enjoying the book!  Here are some discussion questions to go along with your reading.
I'll see you at the meeting.


How does this version of Beauty and the Beast compare with other versions of the tale you have heard?

How does Beauty feel about her nickname?  In what ways do you think she lives up to both her real name and her nickname?  Is beauty only about how you look?

How does Beauty's family react to having to leave the city and loosing all of their money?  How do you think you and your family would react?

Was it easy for Beauty to decide to leave her family to go live with the Beast?  What would you decide to do?

As Beauty gets to know the Beast, her feelings for him change.  She starts to like him more and more.  Is there anyone you don't like that might turn out to be a good friend if you gave them a second chance?

When Beauty is allowed to go home for a visit she stays longer than week she was given.  Why did she do this?  What would you have done? 

Book Blurbs: Beauty

In this wonderful retelling of the classic fairytale, Beauty and the Beast, Beauty is a young girl who feels awkward around her beautiful sisters.  Her family's sudden loss of their wealth forces them to move to the country and start a new life.  Beauty is both intrigued by and a little fearful of the local lore which calls the forest beside her new house enchanted, with a terrible beast living inside.  It is on the stormy day which brings her father home from a business trip clutching a single rose, that Beauty's adventure really begins.




About the Author


Robin McKinley is an American writer who has won many awards in the US, including the Newbery Medal for The Hero and the Crown, a Newbery Honor for The Blue Sword, and the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature for Sunshine.
She lives in Hampshire, England with her husband, author Peter Dickinson, two hellhounds nicknamed Chaos and Darkness, an 1897 Steinway upright named Rhodanthe, and increasing numbers of rose bushes wedged into three [sic] tiny gardens. The view out her office window is her change-ringing bell tower and in the next village over is a paragon among horses whom Robin is so fortunate as to have permission to ride. Check out her blog at robinmckinleysblog.com.

                             ~Take from robinmckinley.com