Family Book Club: Lions of Little Rock

For our latest family book club we read a book called The Lions of Little Rock by Kristin Levine. It was a cute book about Little Rock during the time of the desegregation of the public school system. It starts the year following the Little Rock 9 going to Central High School and having the National Guard have to come in to keep the peace. (Lexi did her history fair project on this last Spring which is why I thought it would be interesting to read this book for book club.) It really showed how things were still very racially tense during that time. The main character, Marlee, has a friend who is black but very fair skinned so she tried to pass as white at school. I thought it was a great book to teach kids about friendship, tolerance, prejudice, and bravery. It showed how one person could take a stand and participate in a movement to create change on a grander level.

For our book club night we answered questions from the Q &A section in the back of the book and read the author's note that explains more about the real history behind this event. Then we tried our hand at math squares. Marlee loves math and is very interested in a math squares book that her friend Liz has. Liz gives her the book because she is brave enough to stand up in front of the class to give a presentation (Marlee rarely speaks to anyone, even family, in the beginning of the book, but learns to be brave and speak up.) Math squares are similar to Sudoku or Ken Ken puzzles. We tried 3x3's and 4x4s. Each row and column has to add up to whatever number the square calls for. The 3x3's were fairly easy but the 4x4's were tricky!

For our treat we had full sized PayDay candy bars because in the book Marlee gets a full sized PayDay to herself for the first time in her life. It's a big treat! She gets it at Christmas time while her family is waiting to take their first ever plane ride (their Christmas present from their dad) and she's too nervous to even eat it.

It was a cute book. Maybe a little over Drake and Garrett's head but with a few explanations here and there I think they understood it pretty well. Now we are reading a ghost story called Wait Till Helen Comes.