Family Book Club with Friends

Monday night we did something we hadn't ever done before. We've been doing Family Book Club for about 5 years but we've never invited friends. Coincidentally, it happened that my friend Sally Sanchez was also reading The Hobbit to her kids. So we decided to get together, once we were both through with the book, and have book club together. Sally's son, Alma, is Drake and Garrett's age and her daughter, Lily, is Lexi's age. We've had them over to play several times but it had been awhile since they'd seen each other. The kids were very excited to do a combined book club. They kept telling me to ask Sally if they'd finished the book yet.  As it turned out, we both finished within about a week of each other so it worked out perfectly.

First we talked about the author J. R. R. Tolkien (Johnathon Ronald Reuel Tolkien, it seems strange that he went by the name Ronald.) We learned that the name Tolkien means "foolishly brave" or "stupidly clever." We learned that he was born in South Africa (not England, as I had always supposed) and one of his earliest memories was of an encounter with an enormous hairy spider, which is something he added to both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Each of the kids also read a riddle (in the book Bilbo and Gollum have a riddle contest.  If Bilbo wins then Gollum has to lead him out of the tunnels.  If Gollum wins he gets to eat Bilbo!)  It was fun to try and figure them out.  This is Sally's son Eliseo.

Then we discussed the book and then did a decoding activity about the dragon Smaug that I found in the Dragon Activity book that Grandma Debbie gave Zac for Christmas.  Codes are important in the book too because they have to have a code to find the entrance to the mountain where Smaug is guarding the treasure.

I don't have any pictures of our treats but we did have them. I made cupcakes because Bilbo is always talking about having "little cakes" with his tea. Sally brought shortbread, her version  of cram. Cram is the elvish bisquit-like food that the dwarfs carry with them as their food for the journey.We had lots of fun spending time with friends.  We'll have to plan to do it again sometime!