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Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Book club has become a fantastic adventure
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
He needed to write a book report for class.
Selecting the book was the easy part. After all, Cayman Walter Howard, 12, had just completed “The Sea of Trolls,” the national acclaimed best-seller by Nancy Farmer.
And that makes me feel good.
Howard is a sixth-grader at Berean Christian Academy in Atlanta. He’s also a member of a boys book club that I started late last year.
The young men recently completed “The Sea of Trolls,” their follow-up to “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” the first book the club read. The book’s a textured, but fun, Harry Potterish fantasy that clocks in at more than 200 pages.
They started reading it about three months ago. With school, sports, church and all the other activities the gang’s involved in, we set a flexible deadline.
No rush. No worries. More fun.
Community interest in the club continues. A reader whom I only know as “Diane” has dropped off two bags of Webster’s New World dictionaries. She and some friends like the idea of a club so much that they ponied up the cash for them. How inspiring.
Rae Mason of Norcross has knitted bookmarks for each of the club members. She also has made a standing offer to craft more if needed, and I might have to take her up on that.
Right now, we have 14 members and have had as many as 15. One of the kids, Courtney Pouncy, a sixth-grader at Trickum Middle School, moved with his parents to Ohio. His mom got a job transfer.
The remaining kids, who range in age from 9 to 14, represent different areas of metro Atlanta. Most are Gwinnettians, but some boys are from Atlanta, Douglasville and Decatur.
Membership can’t help but climb. Parents are always asking about the club. Shannette Dennis, has kept in touch via e-mail to make sure I didn’t forget to tell her the title of the third book that the boys will read. She wants her son, Samiy McCuff, an eighth-grader at McConnell Middle School in Loganville, to join us.
And of course, he can.
We took our sweet time reading “The Sea of Trolls,” a Scandinavian folkloric tale with dragons, trolls, spiders and beasts. It’s a novel about Jack, an 11-year-old farm boy who gets rebuked by his religious father. The village bard asks if Jack can be his apprentice. Jack barely starts his apprenticeship when he and his sister, Lucy, are captured by a ship of marauders.
A perfect story, Howard said, for a one-page book report.
“I just liked the adventure that Jack, the boy, had,” he told me.
“And the monsters.”
What started out as a club about reading has grown into something grander than literacy. We’ve only met a few times, but some of the boys have formed a camaraderie that’s hard to mistake. My son, Miles, and I played hoops one weekend with Chris Gordon, who lives in Lawrenceville. Several readers have offered to help in any way possible.
This weekend, if the weather permits, the club plans to hook up for burgers, franks and discussion Saturday afternoon in Lilburn Park. We’ll talk about “The Sea of Trolls” for a spell, eat, and maybe toss a football or Frisbee around. We’ll also decide what book to read next.
See, our adventure as a club is just beginning.
Rick Badie’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875 or e-mail rbadie@ajc.com.
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The Badie Tour: March 11
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Nappy-headed hos.” That’s the term national radio host Don Imus used on air last week to describe the mostly black Rutgers University women’s basketball team. On Wednesday, Rick Badie, your AJC Gwinnett News columnist, gets to the root of the remark by hanging out at Heavenly Touch Beauty Hut, a salon in Lawrenceville that caters to black women. Read about the Badie Tour, in print and online, in Thursday’s AJC Gwinnett News.
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