Saturday 5 May 2012

Father/Son Beauty

Wow.

The father/son book club turned out to be one of the highlights of my time at ISB. The intro activity of choosing our characteristics was simple yet special enough to get the night started on a great note. But it was the conversation that had me in awe--it was deep and thoughtful and insightful and so incredibly mature. This book has so many things to talk about that we never even got to the questions I had written ahead of time, plus the boys touched on many of them in their organic talk. What struck me was how the minute we started talking, we were all just people--not dads, kids and a teacher--just people. I chuckled when one boy said, "Um, I have to disagree with Nick in his last statement" and Nick was another boy's dad. The boys were book club rock stars.

All dads in my group, except for one, admitted freely that they cried at the end of the book. One dad even bought six copies of the book for adult friends because he felt it was that important.

On a reflective note, I love that I took enough time to find the right book and thankfully did not choose a fluff book just to get boys on board. This book felt perfect.

3 comments:

a to z library said...

Ohhh what a great book choice. I am putting this on my idea list! I am going to host my first parent child book club next year. Did you purchase all the books?

Becky Maher said...

This sounds fantastic! I love your book choice, too. There is so much to talk about. After we did our mother/daughter book club I had a lot of requests for a father/son one, but I didn't get it done this year. I'm putting it at the top of the planning list for next year!

Tara said...

Thanks for all the great feedback about the father/son book club*. I thought I would write a post about the logistics for those out there that want to give it a try.

1. I purchased four copies of the book for our library, but I asked most participants to purchase it on their e-reader. Most chose this option.

2. Ideally, I would have loved a male to be leading the evening, but there were no male teachers that signed up. I felt worried about this at the start, but it was not an issue at all.

* Miss Moyer, so sorry that I accidentally deleted your comment. :(