We read all kinds of books in my library book groups, but until yesterday we had not yet read and discussed a nonfiction title.\u00a0 I’ve tried to convince the groups to let me try a nonfiction book, but the idea has always been promptly shut down.<\/p>\n
I was very pleased, then, when this years’s 6th grade book group acquiesced and permitted me to thrust a nonfiction title upon them.\u00a0 They weren’t enthusiastic –\u00a0they were skeptical –\u00a0but they still said “yes.”\u00a0 And so yesterday we discussed Moonbird: A Year on the Wind with the Great Survivor B95 <\/em>by Phillip Hoose<\/a>.<\/p>\n I purposefully chose a book that I was excited to read, knowing that some of that excitement would help carry the group, but I also chose this book because it is absolutely fascinating and engaging.\u00a0 A species of shorebird that is suffering a rapidly decline, yet one individual bird of that species has thrived for twenty years or more?\u00a0 And flown from the tip of South America to the Arctic and back each year?\u00a0 Amazing.\u00a0 I LOVED this book: it’s one of the best books I’ve read in the last year.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, as I had predicted to myself, it didn’t go over so well with the book group.\u00a0 Of six group members, only three attended yesterday (one who couldn’t come most surely had read the book, though), and of those three, only one had actually read the whole book.\u00a0 One other had read four pages, and the third hadn’t read any of it.\u00a0 Fortunately, Phillip Hoose’s website<\/a> has some great links to useful video and audio, so we watched (and heard) Hoose discuss why he wrote the book and read an excerpt from it.\u00a0 We also watched part of a great informative video by Parks Canada about the rufa<\/em> red knot to bring everyone up to speed on the subject of the book.\u00a0 And the group member who had read it helped me discuss and explain the most interesting parts of the book to the other two sixth graders present.<\/p>\n All in all, not a failure, this first foray into having a nonfiction title to discuss in book group.\u00a0 Perhaps the secret might be to introduce nonfiction titles right at the beginning, with our youngest book group (the third graders) so that it doesn’t seem odd or unusual the way that it did to the sixth graders.\u00a0 I’ll keep trying, definitely, and I’m very glad to have had a reason to read this excellent book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We read all kinds of books in my library book groups, but until yesterday we had not yet read and discussed a nonfiction title.\u00a0 I’ve tried to convince the groups to let me try a nonfiction book, but the idea has always been promptly shut down. I was very pleased, then, when this years’s 6th … Continue reading First foray<\/span>