Mother Daughter Book Club #20

Summary: Today I moved to a twelve-acre rock covered with cement, topped with bird turd and surrounded by water. I'm not the only kid who lives here. There's my sister, Natalie, except she doesn't count. And there are twenty-three other kids who live on the island because their dads work as guards or cook's or doctors or electricians for the prison, like my dad does. Plus, there are a ton of murderers, rapists, hit men, con men, stickup men, embezzlers, connivers, burglars, kidnappers and maybe even an innocent man or two, though I doubt it. The convicts we have are the kind other prisons don't want. I never knew prisons could be picky, but I guess they can. You get to Alcatraz by being the worst of the worst. Unless you're me. I came here because my mother said I had to. -- Puffin

Unfortunately, Booking Daughter and I had to miss this month's meeting because she was feeling a bit under the weather (but it did allow me to continue on my mission to take down some a wallpaper border!) I was pretty bummed because I absolutely loved AL CAPONE DOES MY SHIRTS by Gennifer Choldenko. Evidently, all of the girls and their moms loved it too (except for Booking Daughter) because they ended up talking about the book for over an hour! The girls are really coming into their own as far as book discussions go, and I see The Tweeny Bookworms just getting better and better!

I don't know a lot of the details, but the girls did talk about Alcatraz. One of the moms even brought pictures from her visit to Alcatraz (a sightseeing tour, not an incarceration!) The girls also ended up talking about autism and the differences in the 1930s and present day. Our lovely hostesses for the meeting also had a surprise for the girls. Since she came up with our official name and logo a few months ago, she decided to have an ice cream cake made with them. Isn't it just too cute?


Next month, we will be reading THE NAME OF THIS BOOK IS SECRET by Pseudonymous Bosch. I was expecting the May book to be A WRINKLE IN TIME so I was caught a bit off guard. I know next to nothing about this book except it is the first in a series, and everything surrounding the book seems quite mysterious. It looks like a very fun read for the girls. There is a very cool website devoted to the books as well as the author's blog. Let me know if you've read any of these books and what you think!

Summary: This is the story about a secret. but it also contains a secret story. When adventurous detectives, Cass, an ever-vigilant survivalist, and Max-Ernest, a boy driven by logic, discover the Symphony of Smells, a box filled with smelly vials of colorful ingredients, they accidentally stumble upon a mystery surrounding a dead magician's diary and the hunt for immortality. Filled with word games, anagrams, and featuring a mysterious narrator, this is a book that won't stay secret for long. -- Little Brown