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Sample Recipes & Activities A Taste of The Kids' Book Club Book Have you ever wondered what Turkish Delight – the confection that bewitched Edmund in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – tastes like? Would your book club enjoy making locker pockets out of jeans when you discuss The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants? How about trying your hand at soap carvings like the ones left in the knothole of a tree in To Kill a Mockingbird? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, read on! The Kids’ Book Club Book is chock-full of recipes and activities paired with top book club titles. To whet your appetite, here’s a sampling.
Sample Recipe Kachumber (Tomato and Cucumber Salad) While researching Homeless Bird, Gloria Whelan came upon this recipe for Kachumber, a tangy Indian relish, and it has since become one of her favorites. Whelan enjoys Kachumber as a cooling accompaniment to spicy curry dishes, but it also makes a delicious salad on its own. Notes: Adjust the amount of chiles to the taste of the group. Wear plastic or rubber gloves while handling the chiles to protect skin from the oil in them. Avoid direct contact with eyes, and wash hands thoroughly after handling.
In a medium bowl, combine all ingredients, adding cilantro leaves and salt to taste. Keep refrigerated until ready to serve. Yield: 4 servings as a salad, 6-8 servings as a relish
Egg Babies When considering an activity to connect with the parenting
theme in The First Part Last for her middle school book club
at the Southwest County Library in Boca Raton, Florida, Karyn
Dombrosky recalled the egg babies she made as a child. “I wanted
the teens to gain an understanding of the life Bobby chose, and
I felt making egg babies, which are so delicate and must be named
and protected, would allow them to connect a little with Bobby’s
situation,” says Dombrosky. To make carriers for the babies, Dombrosky found small plastic containers, but she says other objects, such as small empty berry cartons, could be used. Participants made handles for the carriers by punching holes in the sides of the containers and threading pipe cleaners through. As a finishing touch, kids made “blankets” for their babies out of pieces of felt. Dombrosky says the project was a big success. “Even several days after the program, I saw teens carrying their egg babies with them. I was happy to see that no one regarded it as just a silly egg but as something to take care of,” she says. Notes:
To prepare the eggs:
To make the “babies”:
Sample Activity #2 Test Your Memory Cynthia Richey put the observation and memory skills of her Just for Guys Book Club to the test at the Mt. Lebanon (Pennsylvania) Public Library when the group discussed Hatchet. “Brian survived by being observant,” explains Richey. “It’s important to observe carefully, and to see things you might not recognize, and to remember what you’ve seen.” Richey placed about twenty-five objects of varying sizes on a large tray, including dice, a pen, a mitten, a paperweight, a plastic action figure, a leaf, an acorn, a screwdriver, and a clay pot. She placed the tray in the center of a table and asked participants to observe the tray for one minute and try to remember what they saw. She then removed the tray, handed out paper, and asked participants to write down everything on the tray. “Everything came from the library, and one dad’s strategy for remembering was to think about what objects one would find in a library,” says Richey. “The boys did a little better than the dads, which tells you something about the aging memory!” |