In January, we drank cocoa instead of tea at our Young Ladies Literary Tea. If you have ever read Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s Understood Betsy you will know how important hot cocoa and cookies are. Those awful Putney cousins may make Betsy do farm chores, but they also show their love in cookies and cocoa. On…
Author: Sara Masarik
Curators of things Good, True, and Beautiful
Betsy and Tacy Young Ladies Literary Tea
In December my girls and I read Maud Hart Lovelace’s last six Betsy Tacy books for our Young Ladies Tea series. This is one of my favorite YLT book clubs to date. I was very ill in November and was confined to a chair for a number of days. During that time, Betsy and her…
The Secret Garden Young Book Club
Just before Thanksgiving, I had the pleasure of hosting a The Secret Garden book club with almost 25 young readers whose ages ranged from 7 to 14. It was one of our “mixed” book clubs that celebrates the kind of book that is especially good for family read aloud – a book that everyone will…
Here, There Be Dragons
Many years ago I got lost in James A. Owen’s Here, There Be Dragons and its sequels. At the time I was reading solely for my own enjoyment and found the series to be exciting, wholesome, and a fantastic literary puzzle for me to solve. When my well-read teen book club readers begged for more…
The Strange Intruder
As a boy mom, a small part of my regular reading diet includes previewing books that come from trustworthy sources as possible reads for the often difficult-to-please 8-14-year-old boy niche. In this book list article, Diane and I mention that, in our experience as teachers, boy moms, and encouragers of readers, we have learned that…
Hobbit Club: October Meeting
As I was preparing for our October Hobbit Club meeting, I fretted that I didn’t have any pre-planned questions to throw at the group. Silly me… all this crowd needs for good discussion is an open-concept furniture floor plan so we can see each other and move around to refresh our refreshments. To that end,…
The Book of Three Book Club
Last month I had the pleasure of reading The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander with almost twenty young readers. It was a tremendously good book club because, after a year and a half of reading together, we have developed a common vernacular and culture. It isn’t enough to discuss the story arc or character…
Pride and Prejudice Young Ladies Literary Tea
For our fourth Young Ladies Literary Tea, we read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Really, could we have chosen a more perfect book for a literary tea? An advantage of doing these teas monthly is that we can settle into a rhythm. As usual, we went to the home of my friend Giovanna, some of…
Hobbit Club: September Meeting
In our September Hobbit Club meeting, we drank Dragon Eye Red Ale beer that Greg and I brewed, we had birthday cupcakes for Frodo and Bilbo, and we laughed until our sides hurt. It was a party for Hobbits! The reading for this month was the Joseph Pearce commentary, Frodo’s Journey. At this point in…
Book Club Questions
Sometimes the hardest part about leading a book club is getting the conversation going. While every book will have its own relevant questions and topics for discussion, it is nice to have a cheat sheet you can consult when the conversation dries up. Here are a dozen of my favorites: What did you like most…
Rose Campbell Young Ladies Literary Tea
In this third Young Ladies Literary Tea, we returned to Alcott. In an unplanned twist, our general Eight Cousins book club got upgraded to a Young Ladies Literary Tea for the Rose Campbell books. Alcott’s writing is so safe that I decided to convert this to one of our teas because I knew that it…
Freckles & A Girl of the Limberlost Young Ladies Literary Tea
After the success of my Young Ladies Literary Tea for An Old Fashioned Girl, I had high hopes for our second meeting, Freckles & A Girl of the Limberlost. Due to some logistical complications, we had to move the tea to my house. As I said in my last article, this is a grand experiment…
An Old Fashioned Girl Young Ladies Literary Tea
An Old Fashioned Girl isn’t my favorite Alcott book, but it is near the top. (My favorite Alcott story is the Rose Campbell series.)
Hobbit Club: August Meeting
I do not know what I did to get so blessed. In all likelihood, nothing. God knew what Greg and I needed, and He just asked us to obey His promptings and follow His lead. And, by His grace, He has led us into a Hobbit Club which can only be a gift from Him….
Rose Campbell Books
“Keep good company, read good books, love good things and cultivate soul and body as faithfully as you can…” -Rose In Bloom My friends and readers of this blog are likely to know that I consider Louisa May Alcott to be in my list of very favorite authors. I say very favorite even though Diane…