There are books that I love but I'm not sure how to tell anyone else about them because I'm not sure how to put into words what I loved about them without telling the whole story. This is why I don't write book reviews. I just like to be able to hand someone a book and say, "Read this!" and have them believe me, read it and love it. Luckily, I have the perfect job in which to do this. I love almost every single thing about being a school librarian and this is one of the best. Handing books to kids. There's a Judy Blume quote that I love, "Librarians save lives: by handing the right book, at the right time, to a kid in need." It applies to anyone sharing books of course, not just librarians. Teachers and especially in middle school-other kids...but it's a part of my job that I enjoy tremendously.
So, this book. Goodbye Stranger is by Rebecca Stead who wrote When You Reach Me and then won the Newbery. Goodbye Stranger is an important book. It's a book that shows how easy it is to make mistakes with friends both old and new and how difficult it is to navigate this whole growing up thing.
I think it would be a perfect book for a mother/daughter book club. You could read it together, aloud or each on your own. You could talk about it or even have a journal back and forth about the book.
I recently saw this post on the Growing Book by Book blog about a family dinner book club. I think this book would be PERFECT for that kind of a discussion. I'm hoping to launch the idea at our school. We could wear cat ears and eat cinnamon toast and drink milkshakes while we talk about the temptations to push our own personal boundaries and values to create a connection with someone else. I'll let you know if I pull it off!
