The Mother-Daughter Book Club: Spring

BOOK NAME: The Mother-Daughter Book Club
AUTHOR: Heather Vogel Frederick

Welcome to today’s book club meeting!

This week we read the Spring section of The Mother-Daughter Book Club by Heather Vogel Frederick. The girls had a lot of new experiences during this season. Let’s head over to the meeting and talk about them!

If you have read through Spring, click “See More” to go to the book club meeting.

If you haven’t gotten that far yet, stop here!

Cassidy plays with her hockey team in the championships. All is going really well, until she gets hurt. Cassidy’s mom is really worried, and might have even asked the coach to keep her out the rest of the game, until Cassidy asks “What would Jo March do?” With that, Cassidy skates back in to finish the game.

On April 19, the town of Concord celebrates the anniversary of the battle that started the Revolutionary War. During the pancake breakfast after the battle reenactment, the girls in the book club tangle with the Fab Four in an all-out food fight. Except now it looks like it might just be the Fab Three–Megan dumps a plate of pancakes on Becca Chadwick’s head!

Another big spring event is the Spring Fling dance–the first dance the girls have been to. Megan designs dresses for herself and for Jess, and even fixes Emma’s formal dress so she can wear it to a non-formal dance. At the dance, the book club faces off with the Fab Four and encounters some boy drama.

The book club finally meets at Jess’s house. Her mom is still in New York, so her dad hosts. He has built a lilac arbor in the yard, and embarrasses Jess (and the other girls, too) by bringing lilac wreaths out for them to wear while they dance around the maypole. He got the idea from a mothering magazine. The incident brings the girls closer together, and Jess makes up with her father quickly.

Why do you think it’s so hard for Cassidy’s mom to let her play hockey?

Why do you think Megan ended up choosing the book club as friends over her old friends, the Fab Four?

Have you ever been to a school dance? Was it a formal? What was your favorite part of the dance?

Have you ever been embarrassed by your parents the way Jess is embarrassed by her dad?

Here
are some
words you might not have seen before. (All definitions
from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.)

Maypole: A tall flower-wreathed pole forming a center for May Day sports and dances.

Organic: Of, relating to, yielding, or involving the use of food produced with the use of feed or fertilizer of plant or animal origin without employment of chemically formulated fertilizers, growth stimulants, antibiotics, or pesticides.

Ritual: Of or relating to rites or a ritual: celebration..

This week, we will read the last section, called Summer. Next week’s meeting will be the last meeting of the Book of the Month club. Thanks so much to everyone who has participated this year. See you next Wednesday!

-DogEared