SOL: Where Two or Three Are Gathered for Book Love!

I join my fellow bloggers in "serving up a slice"
 a day late, on Wednesday,

to the Tuesday Slice of Life (SOL) community.

Thanks to Stacey, Betsy, Beth, Kathleen,
Deb, Melanie, Lanny, and Kelsey

 for hosting this meeting place each Tuesday
and nurturing our writing lives.

Yesterday was a busy day. I'm retired, but I had a morning meeting, an afternoon meeting, and an evening meeting. And I wanted to write my slice about the afternoon meeting. However, by the time I reached the end of the day, I had no energy left for writing. So even though I can't link to the Tuesday Slice of Life, I'm adding a Wednesday slice. And it's good enough!

Our final book club meeting of the year was at the public library. I arrived late (with just-out-of-the-oven cookie bars) to find Ms. Bowman, our public librarian, as the lone bibliophile in the room. We have alternated meetings this past year between the middle school and the public library. We've learned that location is everything and that you can't beat a meeting that happens right after school in the same facility and provides rides home via the activity bus. 

Both Ms. Bowman and myself bring many books to display at our meetings. So even though no students had shown up yet, we loved perusing the books on display. I was thrilled to see that Ms. Bowman was reading Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes, a book I recently read and loved. She had several titles that I added to my WTR (want to read) list. I shared the fifteen word speech idea for best book of the year that I read about on Twitter (compliments of Pernille Ripp's classroom assignment). And we decided to write our own 15 word speeches about a book we had recently read and loved. Before long, Anna breezed in from track and joined us in writing her own fifteen word speech. So even though we were few in number (three to be exact, well, four when Anna's mom showed up and joined in sharing book love), our enthusiasm for books was unflagging. And Anna got to take as many cookie bars as she wanted and we left some for the library staff too. 

Note:  Our favorite books came from the books available in our display.

Favorite books of Ms. Behnke (that's me) - Ghost Boys & 

Macy McMillan and the Rainbow Goddess

Favorite books of Anna -Awkward (a graphic novel) & 

The Creativity Project 

Favorite books of Ms. Bowman - Saints and Misfits & 

Dear Martin

I'll add our fifteen word speeches once I'm home. I forgot to bring them with me to grandson Jack's house where I'm babysitting and writing this post during nap time. (Actually, it took me until Friday to find the paper with our fifteen word speeches. Here they are!)

Anna's speech for Awkward (Svetlana Chmakova):
Girl pushes boy.
Guilty.
Each in club.
Club hates club. 
Clubs closed.
Must work together.

Ms. Bowman's speech for Saints and Misfits (S.K. Ali):

Janna

Muslim

can’t date

Muslim boy

assault

non-Muslim boy

crush

video

shame

victim

brave advocate

My speech for Ghost Boys (Jewell Parker Rhodes):
Heartbreaking!
Jerome, killed by policeman, probes racism.
Ghost Boy befriends Emmett Till and policeman's daughter.