The Mother-Daughter Book Club: How Ten Busy Mothers and Daughters Came Together to Talk, Laugh, and Learn Through Their Love of Reading by Shireen Dodson List Price: $14.00 Pages: 304 Format: Paperback ISBN: 0060890347 Publisher: HarperCollins

Shireen Dodson's The Mother-Daughter Book Club is a wonderful primer on how to start a reading group for adolescent children and their parents. Written from experience, Dodson's guide is full of practical advice for getting busy parents together with busy kids to talk about books and, by extension, themselves. Aimed at about the 9- to 13-year-old age level, the ideas and suggestions in this book are easily relevant through age 17. While written specifically for mothers and girls, the material presented is equally appropriate for fathers and boys.

Dodson includes all the usual information such as setting up your group, choosing books, and running your meetings. But the heart of this book, as of any reading group, is the discussions. Dodson devotes two solid chapters and many more subheadings to the nature of dialogue. She understands that the mother-daughter dynamic is a unique one, and that teen and preteen girls are striving to be individuals and shape their own identities. Given this special combination, Dodson takes great care to help groups develop the art of discussion. She includes tips on getting people talking and introducing sensitive themes. She demonstrates ways of gently probing comments to draw out people's answers and of getting people to back up their comments with examples from the text or their lives. Included are several sample conversations from her own group to illustrate her points.

Another strong point of Dodson's book is her discussion of themes in literature. Using concrete examples, she addresses the need for care in choosing your reading selections when you are reading with children. She realizes that some topics can lead to much self-revelation within a reading-group context and must be approached carefully. She also knows that sometimes it is the subtext of novels that sparks the most discussion and that often the most casual of book passages or discussion comments are the most revealing.

Sprinkled throughout The Mother-Daughter Book Club are letters from noted writers, public leaders, educators, and mothers on the importance of reading and the great potential for building relationships when stories are shared. Along with these letters are dozens of reading lists by these contributors. Dodson's own lists in the index are extensive. She includes several mini-reading guides for selected titles. She also has pages of resources for mothers and daughters, including websites, magazines, organizations, and additional activities.

Any mother-daughter book club, or even an individual mother-daughter team, would be wise to pick up this useful guide. Dodson's thorough coverage of all aspects of a parent-child reading group makes The Mother-Daughter Book Club an indispensable resource.

   --- Reviewed by Liz Keuffer


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