March 2008 Book Club Meeting and April Selection

Last night, the Preschool Moms Book Club met to discuss THE DARKEST CHILD by Delores Phillips. We met for almost four hours which is definitely a record for us. I'd like to say that we discussed the book for the entire time, but of course we didn't. We started out discussing the book; however, we ended up talking about our children which then led to lots of other stuff!

We all agreed that it was a terrific book and a great book club pick! One member of our book club actually chose this book when she read about it in the 2008 Reading Group Choices guide. While the subject matter was at times very disturbing, we felt that the author told an intriguing story. There were lots of issues to disucss such as racial tension, integration, and child abuse. We did have a few minor criticisms of the writing style, but we all felt it didn't hinder our enjoyment of the book one bit. We used the discussion questions in the back of the paperback book to get our discussion flowing (not that we needed much help with this book.)

Summary: Rozelle Quinn is so fair-skinned that she can pass for white. Yet everyone in her small Georgia town knows. Rozelle's ten children (by ten different daddies) are mostly light, too. They sleep on the floor in her drafty, rickety three-room shack and live in fear of her moods and temper. But they are all vital to her. They occupy the only world she rules and controls. They multiply her power in an otherwise cruel and uncaring universe.
Rozelle favors her light-skinned kids, but insists that they all love and obey her unquestioningly. Tangy Mae, thirteen, is her brightest but darkest-complected child. Tangy wants desperately to continue with her education. Shockingly, the highest court in the land has just ruled that Negroes may go to school with whites. Her mother, however, has other plans.

Rozelle wants her daughter to work, cleaning houses for whites, like she does, and accompany her to the "Farmhouse," where Rozelle earns extra money bedding men. Tangy Mae, she's decided, is of age. - soho press

Our April selection is THE BOOK OF BRIGHT IDEAS by Sandra Kring. I'm pretty excited about this choice because the last few books we have read have been kind of downers. I have a lot of books on my plate right now, so it's good for me that this is an "easier" read.

Summary: Wisconsin, 1961. Evelyn “Button” Peters is nine the summer Winnalee and her fiery-spirited older sister, Freeda, blow into her small town–and from the moment she sees them, Button knows this will be a summer unlike any other. Much to her mother’s dismay, Button is fascinated by the Malone sisters, especially Winnalee, a feisty scrap of a thing who carries around a shiny silver urn containing her mother’s ashes and a tome she calls “The Book of Bright Ideas.” It is here, Winnalee tells Button, that she records everything she learns: her answers to the mysteries of life. But sometimes those mysteries conceal a truth better left buried. And when a devastating secret is suddenly revealed, dividing loyalties and uprooting lives, no one–from Winnalee and her sister to Button and her family–will ever be the same. - bantam dell