Fifth Grade Lunch Book Group Launches Second Book

Fifth Grade Lunch Book Group Launches Second Book!

What started out last year as having lunch occasionally with three fourth grade students turned into an unexpected brilliant idea to read and discuss a book together. Last year we read and discussed a phenomenal story Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate about a boy from Africa who flees his home - without any family -  because of war - and comes to Minnesota as an immigrant to live with his cousins and start a new life. We got a real sense of what it could feel like to leave your home and country and start a new life very far away from everything and everyone familiar. What a story and so beautifully told! We all marked up our books with so many powerful lines that we were eager to share with one another. We loved reading and discussing this book so much last year that the group chose the book Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacquline Woodson to read this year. This memoir, told in verse, is the story of Woodson's life - her past, her people, her memories. Her book won the National Book Award in 2015. 


already post-it notes plastered 
in the book...

" My fingers curl into fists, automatically

This is the way, my mother said,

of every baby's hand.

I do not know if these hands will become

Malcolm's - raised and fisted

or Martin's - open and asking

or James's - curled around a pen.

I do not know if these hands will be 

Rosa's

or Ruby's

gently gloved

and fiercely folded

calmly in a lap,

on a desk,

                                            around a book,

                                            ready

                                              to change the world..."

Stay tuned...