I’m in a book club right now, for the first time ever. (Yeah, I know, gasp. But I’ve always had so much to read for so many reasons that I’ve never sought out a book club). It’s a pretty great concept – reading a book you want to read with your friends. A concept that I’ve thought about for a while now should really be part of every single ELA curriculum. Book clubs allow us to offer students curated choices, present more diverse voices as part of our curricula, and expand on themes and genres to give students a wider range of experiences through their conversations with classmates. Win, win, win. Today on the pod, I want to show you how easy it is to wave your book club wand and easy turn part of your curriculum into book clubs.
A Bit of Context: My 1920s Book Club
My first book club experiment was a pretty simple one, but it showed me how easy it is to go from a whole class novel unit to a book club unit. My curriculum included both The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises, and I knew I wasn’t going to have time for both. I had added a play performance to our theater unit, a poetry slam to our poetry unit, and plenty of other special projects and events that took time. So instead of reading Fitzgerald and Hemingway, I grouped them together into a book club unit. Since the authors represented a similar time in American Lit and were even close friends, I felt comfortable having students read one of the novels and become a little bit familiar with the other through my initial book pitch and the final presentations from students reading the other novel.
Reframe: Using a Book Club to Expand or Condense Curriculum Choices
It was an easy reframe. Perhaps you, too, would like to carve out time for something in your curriculum that is getting crowded out by whole class texts? You might, for example, combine several into a themed book clubs unit in order to allow you to do a choice unit as well. Or a podcasting unit. Or a genius hour project. Of course, I’m not recommending that if all of your whole class texts feel essential and engaging, but if there’s room to play…
So book clubs can be a helpful vehicle for condensing curriculum. But they can also be helpful for expanding it. Maybe you teach a memoir right now and it’s only engaging about 25% of your students. The rest just don’t connect to the author’s voice, or don’t like the style, or don’t read it for reasons you can’t guess at the moment. Why not book club it? Yes, I used book club as a verb and I’m not sorry.
Book Club It: Memoir
You can take your single memoir, wave your book club wand, and expand the unit to include five or six memoirs instead.
Instead of offering one perspective and genre, you could choose a variety from options like:
- Malala Yousafzai: I am Malala (young reader’s edition or full)
- Michelle Obama: Becoming
- Trevor Noah: Born a Crime
- Jarrett Krosoczka: Hey Kiddo (Graphic Novel)
- Pedro Martin: Mexikid (Graphic novel)
- Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed: When Stars are Scattered (Graphic Novel)
- George Takei: They Called us Enemy (graphic novel)
- Anne Frank: The Diary of Anne Frank
- Ji Li Jiang: Red Scarf Girl
- Marjane Satrapi: Persepolis (graphic novel)
- Rex Ogle: Free Lunch
Imagine how much more likely a student is to find a memoir that’s meaningful to them with all these different options, and how many more stories and perspectives will be represented in whatever final work the student groups present back to each other!
Book Club It: Graphic Novels
Maybe you’ve got a graphic novel in your curriculum, and it’s really compelling for some of your students. But some of them just aren’t that interested, and you can see that other topics or styles might be more intriguing for them. Once again, the option to book club it could help.
Below, you’ll see a wide variety of texts recommended by teachers who attended Camp Creative a few summers ago when we focused on graphic novels. Perhaps you could put together a graphic novel book club set focused on family relationships, experiences of conflict, coming of age, the hero’s journey, or some other theme that fits with your needs.
Book Club It: American Dream
Texts connected to the American Dream are another place where you might consider expanding a unit into a book club. This is a common theme in American literature texts, and yet can any book ever cover such a wide-ranging theme? There are as many versions of the American Dream as there are people in America, so expanding a unit to include more perspectives could greatly enrich it.
I hear you if you’re thinking that the book you’ve got on the American Dream is Gatsby, and that you love it too much to dilute it into book clubs. In that case, what about a spinoff book clubs unit? Maybe you do Gatsby as a group, but in slightly less time than you’d normally spend, then jump into a book clubs unit offering up many more perspectives on the dream you’ve introduced with Fitzgerald.
Now in addition to a book club to help you condense curriculum and one to help you diversify perspectives on a theme, you’ve got book clubs as a lever to help you expand out from any text to take it further.
Book Club It: You get the Idea
I could keep going with my examples, imagining how I might book club so many different titles for so many different reasons. Or how I might apply the book club concept to a podcast unit or a documentary film unit. But I think you get the idea. Turn book clubs into a verb and you’ve got endless potential for small tweaks in your curriculum that can help you better engage students and bring in more diverse voices and perspectives.
A Note on Affording Book Clubs
I don’t want to finish this episode without a quick discussion of funding. Because of course, it isn’t always easy to grab 6-8 copies of a half dozen titles for a book club. Caitlin Lore, in our interview about her verse novel book clubs, shared the idea of working with your librarian (School? Public?) to borrow multiple copies of a book through inter-library loan. So that is a great option if you have access to a strong library network. Putting up a Donors Choose project is another option – if you time one of these right (and your school allows your use of the platform), you can get a lot of help for your funding through various corporate sponsors. Finally, you can advocate for change through your own school funding streams. Go ahead and request money for the books you want to teach, and make your arguments with confidence. You’ll never know what you might accomplish if you don’t try.
