Family Book Club: When You Reach Me

A few days ago we had our book club discussion (aka party!) about the book When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. I don't want to say too much to give away the plot because it does have a nice twist, but I will say that it is for a little bit older kids. Not because it's too mature with violence,language, drug references etc, but because it takes some mental maneuvering to understand the plot. It would be easy for younger kids to just not "get it." I had to do quite a bit of explaining with my younger kids (they are 9) but I believe everything made sense to them in the end. My 13 year old seemed to really enjoy it which was kind of what I was going for since we often read books that are a little lower than her level. The story is well written and engaging and has a great plot. It even won a Newberry a few years ago.

First of all we had to have a When You Reach Me themed dinner. So we pretended we were having dinner at Jimmy's which is a sandwich shop the kids work at during their lunch hour in the book. Jimmy never lets the kids have the Meatball sandwiches though so of course that's what we had to have for our meal. I make a pretty mean meatball sandwich if I do say so myself! Click HERE for my recipe. They were amazingly delicious! We also had chips because in the book Miranda eats a lot of little bags of chips that are supposed to be saved for the "pregnant jailbirds" that her mother goes to mentor once a month.

After dinner we talked about the author and had a discussion about the book. As always I was very impressed with the questions the kids asked and their answers to my questions. This part of book club is always meaningful to me because I get to see what impression the book made and how it made them think, and also how they are applying the things they learned in their own lives. Then we played a fun game that I based off of a game show that is talked about in the book. Miranda's mom is practicing in the book for a game show called, The $20,000 Pyramid, that she is going to be in, so I made up a version of the game for us to play. The first round is the speed round which is very similar to the game Taboo. You have 30 seconds to figure out seven words. Your partner describes the words without saying it and you have to guess what they are. In the second round they had groups of four words that all had something in common. For example snow, cottonballs, toilet paper and marshmallows would be Things that are White. We had categories like Things That Bounce, Dog Breeds, Things That Burn, and Smelly Things (Skunks, soccer socks, sweaty bodies, burned eggs) The final round is similar to the second but the categories are a little more abstract which makes them more difficult (Things you wish for, Things you recite) The kids really had fun with this game. I was very glad I had spent the time to make up the cards the night before.

It was a really fun book to read and a really fun activity night. Now we are moving on to reading another book by Rebecca Stead called Liar and Spy. I want to be able to compare two books by the same author that are not in the same series.