Book Club Experience

    I never really was a fan of book clubs, the reasons being some of them have one view only mindset. They also really never liked hearing opinions of others, unless they had the same ideals of the story or characteristics. So, when I was asked to be a member of a Book Club, I initially turned my nose up at the thought. However, this book club was not a regular book club. I was asked to partake in Dekalb Mock Newberry book club. 

This is a book club based on the Newberry Award for young adult/juvenile fiction award. Now I know you are probably thinking, this is not a real book club, well it is a real book club. We do offer this to our patrons, but typically its staff amongst our neighboring libraries. I am now being trained to work each meeting, which will begin sometime this summer. All our libraries in our county select books that were newly published back in 2022. We then read the books and hold a discussion as to why or why not this would be a Newberry contender. Now of course this is a mock of what the real Newberry award that takes place, but we get something out of it for selecting these books for our juvenile patrons. 

The books we discuss vary from chapter books, picture and we even had a couple graphic novels in our mix. We also tend to find popular authors in the mix, but if they were not publishing newer books for the time, we usually find books before the meetings even start and we all as the committee agree on the selections beforehand. Our winner of 2022 was "Yonder" by Ali Standish. My absolute favorite read that we did was "I Must Betray You" by Ruta Sepetys. 

For our meetings, my supervisor Emma usually has the set up started with questions to follow. However, it's very organic, we usually have volunteers to speak first and then others follow if they have something to additional to add or discredit the book. So, we do have a leader and we take turns sharing our thoughts on the books. We all take turns in answering the questions, however if we get off topic, our leader will get us back on track and also give their opinion as well. 

As far as questions, we do have simple questions towards the end of "Should this be a contender?" and we then get into the complexity of the characters and how would they relate to readers they are intended for. Other questions range from "what did you think of this book?", "How would readers of this age relate?", or "Can this standalone without pictures and just text alone?". Depending on the book, we usually have attendees participating each meeting. I know for me it depends on the book, if I feel compelled to say something I usually cannot stop. Which sometimes can lead to stealing the spotlight, but overall, my experience has been even on speaking. There were a couple times where I thought this person needs to stop, but that was only one time. 

We always hold these meetings at the participating libraries. We rotate which one we are at, but we start and finish at Eckhart. With this in mind, we do offer refreshments at each location and its usually sweets both store bought or homemade. We always open up the discussion with introductions and a random question and answer to break the ice. These are always fun since we offer both virtual and in person discussions, and we do not always see every attendee in person. Usually afterwards if we can give tours of the libraries we will, and that's always fun to see another local library and see how they layout their materials for patrons.