Boys and books

Fourth-graders revamp the classic club model, add baseball, roasted marshmallows and a game of Jeopardy

Friday, May 16, 2008

The house had been cleaned and readied for company.

A variety of snacks were set out near a small stack of dessert-sized plates.

And all the club members arrived with a copy of the book under discussion.

The similarities to other book clubs start to end there, however. This book club included more jumping up and down, more wiggling, more sliding around the kitchen floor in stocking feet, more interrupting, more references to heavy artillery and more fist-pumping than your average book club. And there were definitely more guilt-free returns to the plates of chocolate chip cookies, orange segments, Magic Bars and Cheetos to fill and refill plates.

This is what a book club for fourth-grade boys looks like.

The idea for the club came from Noah Varner, 10, a fourth-grader in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics academy program at Lexington Park Elementary. He used to listen in when his mother, Lizette Varner, hosted her own book club at their house.

‘‘I always watched,” he said. ‘‘The discussion looked really fun and stuff.”

His mother gave him permission to start a club of his own. Noah asked five of his friends at Hollywood Elementary, where he used to attend. And they all joined.

On Friday, the boys discussed ‘‘Flush,” by Carl Hiaasen, a book about a boy dealing with an environmental issue.

‘‘Did you finish it?” one of the boys asked Alex Muller when he arrived.

‘‘No,” Muller said.

‘‘I finished it the first week,” said Greg Sowa.

‘‘It was a good book,” Noah said.

They started the meeting with a trip to the snack table. Then, with all the boys sitting around the Varners’ kitchen table, Lizette stood to the side and asked questions.

‘‘Who wants to summarize the book?” she asked.

‘‘Is it ever OK to do something illegal because you think it’s right?”

‘‘Is it wrong to disobey your parents if you know you’re right?”

They laughed about funny parts in the book and many mentioned the sections they most enjoyed. Everyone participated, and everyone had a chance to say whether they liked the book or not and why.

‘‘Adults have too much pride in themselves,” said Jake Hoffman, when they talked about doing things that adults don’t agree with. ‘‘They need to start believing kids.”

The other boys and the mothers listening in the kitchen laughed.

‘‘I’m serious,” he said.

Noah said he liked reading about the main character successfully dealing with bad characters in the book. ‘‘My favorite part was both times when the two bouncers came up ... cuz then [the main character] always got away and stuff ... and he was always teaching them a lesson.”

Nick Tobler also commented. ‘‘He was about to shoot children, which is child abuse.”

Muller, who’d only been able to read part of the book, described his favorite section. ‘‘My favorite part was when what’s-his-face was out fishing ... and the one guy and then the boat went like ‘whoop,’” he said, moving his hands to indicate the boat sinking.

The book club has been meeting every four to six weeks since September. They changed one aspect of the club after just the first meeting. The mothers of the boys saw that the club seemed to need some activity to go along with the more orthodox discussion of the book.

So, when the boys read ‘‘The Boy Who Saved Baseball” by John H. Ritter, the boys visited a baseball diamond to play the game as part of their club meeting. And when they read ‘‘Hatchet” by Gary Paulsen, a story about a boy trying to survive in the Canadian wilderness after a plane crash, the boys had to search for items hidden in the Varners’ back yard and build a fire, over which they roasted hot dogs and marshmallows to make smores.

‘‘We’ve done some fun activities,” said Craig Hamilton, one of the club members.

At Friday’s meeting, the club played a Jeopardy-style game created by a couple of the boys’ mothers. Lizette divided the boys into two teams and gave each team a silver bell to ring when they thought they knew the answer. The categories were Names, Animals, Numbers, Firsts, Coral Queen and Sewage.

‘‘I’ll take Sewage for 200,” one boy said.

Sarah Hamilton, Craig’s mother, said the club has given him a reason to read more. ‘‘A couple of the boys, my son included, read some ... But they’d prefer to be up a tree or launching something,” she said.

Sarah also noted that it was a good social time for all the boys. ‘‘Like any book club, it isn’t just about the books,” she said.

Lizette described Noah as a big reader on his own. ‘‘He’s a voracious reader ... he reads anything he can get his hands on,” she said.

For her, the biggest advantage to the club is how book clubs encourage discussion.

‘‘It gives me an ‘in’ to talk about things to him,” she said.

Friday’s meeting was the last of the year for the boys’ book club. However, they plan to continue the group with the start of the next school year. They will start the year discussing ‘‘Crash” by Jerry Spinelli.

They boys discussed whether they wanted to expand their group next year.

‘‘We want to get to know new people,” Hoffman said, suggesting it was a good idea to invite others.

Someone mentioned the name of a girl that maybe they should include.

‘‘No!” yelled another.