For today’s giveaway, Cindy has been generous enough to provide a copy of her e-guide and a copy of her book. One lucky winner will receive both.
My personal, signed copy of Cindy Hudson’s book, Book by Book: The Complete Guide to Creating Mother-Daughter Book Clubs no longer lives on my bookshelf. The reason is because I am always pressing it into some unsuspecting mom’s hands or making a trip across town to one of Samantha’s friends houses to let the mom borrow my copy.
How did I become such an advocate of Cindy’s book? Because my daughter’s Mother-Daughter Book Club is already having a huge impact on her reading habits and our family life…and she’s only been in one for three months.
My daughter was a strong reader until last summer, when we came across my old stash of comic books that my parents preserved and sent to me. I thought it was cool to have them around and share them with my daughter…until she ditched chapter books and only wanted to read comics and graphic novels when she went back to school this year.
Ugh. I tried bribes, I tried threats, I even tried good parenting. But nothing seemed to be helping. When the first book was assigned for the club, Samantha lied and said she’d read it when she hadn’t. (More threats, more bribes, not much good parenting…) But now, suddenly, only a few months later she is reading the Harry Potter series.
Why? Because of the positive peer pressure coming from some of the girls in the book club, who are heavy readers plowing through HP books like they were comic books. Three cheers for positive peer pressure!
Thanks in great part to Cindy Hudson (and J. K. Rowling), I have my happy reader back again. Please help me welcome Cindy.
About Cindy Hudson
Cindy Hudson is the author of Book by Book: The Complete Guide to Creating Mother-Daughter Book Clubs (Seal Press 2009) and the e-book Mother-Daughter Book Club Meeting Planner Guides: Collection One, as well as twelve individual planning guides. She blogs about reading groups and family literacy at http://motherdaughterbookclub.com. Cindy lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two daughters.
About Mother-Daughter Book Club Meeting Planner Guides: Collection One
Planning meetings for kids’ and parent-child book clubs holds special challenges. Depending on the age of the kids in the group, you may want to schedule activities along with your book discussion. It’s often important to ask questions that help kids relate actions in the book to issues in their own lives. And, if you meet in your home, you may be looking for easy recipes that you can prepare to feed your crowd.
This collection offers guides to six books that I have hand chosen as being especially good for mothers and their daughters who are aged 9 to 12. You could easily start a mother-daughter book club and begin with these six books, or you can plan to read these books for six meetings in your book-club year. Titles include:
- The Healing Spell by Kimberley Griffiths Little
- How to Survive Middle School by Donna Gephart
- Kimchi and Calamari by Rose Kent
- Monsoon Summer by Mitali Perkins
- The Mother-Daughter Book Club by Heather Vogel Frederick
- Trauma Queen by Barbara Dee
The ideas offered in this eBook are designed to make it easy for you to host a book club meeting. Here’s what you’ll find for each title:
- A review of the book
- Information about the author
- Activities related to the book
- Discussion questions created specifically for the book
- Recipes that are relatively easy to make and tie in to the story
About Book By Book: The Complete Guide to Creating Mother-Daughter Book Clubs
Mothers and daughters share a special bond. . . why not further this bond through reading together? Book clubs have been growing in popularity over the past ten years, started by a variety of people with various interests and goals. Mother-daughter book clubs offer a great way for families to grow and share — with each other and with other mother-daughter pairs. In Book by Book Cindy Hudson offers all the how-to tips mothers need to start their own successful book clubs. Hudson offers her own firsthand experience as the founder of two long-running successful mother-daughter book clubs.
Hudson offers suggestions on books topics, club guidelines, and how to keep the club going as daughters grow older. How big should the club be? Whom should we invite? How often should we meet? How do we make sure we actually read the books? Hudson has all the answers. With recommended book lists (divided by four age groups), online resources, and suggested recipes for book-club treats, Book by Book is a great resource for helping moms and daughters form new memories and traditions.
The Very Short Interview
When did you know for sure that you were a writer and that writing would be a major energy focus in your life?
In some ways I’ve been writing my whole career, as I started out writing brochures, news releases, magazine articles, newsletters and other communications for corporate employers. About 2006 I decided to write more about what I wanted to get on the page than what someone else told me to create. It took me about a year of taking classes and getting a couple of articles published before I really started feeling comfortable telling people I was a writer.
Who has always been behind your writing career and who helped pull you up the ladder of success?
My husband has been my cheerleader all along. He helps me brainstorm ideas, reads my work and suggest edits, and comes up with ideas for me all the time. He bought the rights to my domain name, MotherDaughterBookClub.com, even before I knew I would dedicate so much of my writing to that topic. Professionally, Christina has always pulled me out of my comfort zone to help me get a book published and to continue writing for magazines, and writing e-books. I couldn’t be successful without both of them on my team.
What is the most frequent comment you hear about your book (or books) from readers? Tell us a little story about the response to your work.
I often hear that my meeting planner guides are lifesavers for moms—especially those who work outside the home—who are planning get-togethers with their book clubs. From activities to discussion questions to recommended recipes that go with the book, readers like how comprehensive the guides are. They also like having options so they can put more or less effort into implementing the suggestions depending on how much time they have. Authors like the guides too, and they will often point their readers to my site when they are looking for help.
And Now, Your Turn
Now it’s your turn. You remember how this works right?
I ask you a question. You answer in the comments for your chance to win a book each day.
Please just respond once, even if you make a typo. 
Answer in the comments in 50-200 words (no less and no more to qualify to win one of today’s books). Please read the complete rules at least once!
Thanks for participating in the Writer Mama Every-Day-In-May Book Giveaway! I hope to see you here every day this month. Bring your friends!
This seems like an appropriate question and some folks have already touched on the topic—give us your top five childhood books and why you loved them.
Ready, set, comment!
Comments on this entry are closed.
My favorite book of all was The Secret Garden. I always wanted a garden, even though I lived in a third floor flat in San Francisco. We had a view of the city but no access to our backyard, because my landlady let the next door neighbor grow roses there. Our “front yard” was Dolores Park, so we were not deprived, but I still wanted to plant my own seeds. The Secret Garden’s heroine was named Mary, so that kept me interested too, and I always loved books with a girl protagonist.
When I was little, my favorite books were Golden Books: I Can Fly (also a girl protagonist) and The Wonderful House. How magical it was to think of having a house that could fly or float!
A Hole Is to Dig by Maurice Sendak, kept me laughing so hard at the funny little expression and comments by the charming little boys and animals.
And the fifth books that made a huge impression was Ozma of Oz. I loved all the Oz books, but that one had such a mysterious and enchanting main character.
Instead listing my favorite childhood books, I want to tell a wonderful story about Cindy’s book All my children and my friend’s children are in college and plan on going to grad school, so it will be many years until they’ll have daughters of their own. But this year my niece had a baby girl. For the baby shower, she asked guests to include one of their favorite children’s books with their gift inscribed with their name, instead of a greeting card. In addition to “Love You Forever, I gave my niece a copy of Cindy’s book. I’ve also given a copy to my neighborhood elementary school’s PTA to share with parents. Cindy is helping us build the next generation of readers, one Mother-Daughter Book Club at a time.
It is difficult to keep to just five books so I have to
include a couple of series. The
first, and one of the earliest, would be the Mr Men books by Roger
Hargreaves. I was captivated by
characters like Mr Topsy-Turvy, Mr Muddle, Mr Bump and their exploits. Another series I loved was The Famous
Five by Enid Blyton. We traveled
a lot as an army family but I obviously didn’t feel like I had enough adventure
in my life. The group of four
friends and Timmy the dog with their picnics full of fruit cake and lashings of
ginger beer and their nail biting adventures were just the antidote. Rebecca’s
World by Terry Nation, the man that invented the Daleks on Doctor Who, is one I
still read and can’t put it down; feeds my imagination. I read Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson at school and
couldn’t wait for another English lesson so that we could read another chapter
– another great character and another wonderful adventure. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte would
mark the end of my childhood as this wonderful book beautifully captured some
of the complications of love that I would encounter as an adult.
This is such a tough question! I honestly don’t have many
stand-alone books that I can recall as being childhood favorites, so I’d like
to touch upon some of my favorite children’s book authors instead if it’s okay.
I treasured my first collection of Dr. Seuss books. His
stories were whimsical and his words magical. I thank him for giving me the
interest to learn how to read.
Judy Blume: When I was confused about puberty, “Are You
There God? It’s Me Margaret” helped me along. When I was bullied, “Blubber”
helped me understand “mean girl” dynamics. Peter Hatcher and his zany brother
kept me, an only child, entertained for hours. It really felt like Blume had a
book for every phase of my childhood, all the way through the young adult
years, and I’m exciting to be sharing her books with my own daughter now.
Other favorite authors included Richard Scarry, Beverly
Cleary, Donald J. Sobol and Lois Duncan.
I’m not good at picking
favorites. Let’s just go with the first 5 books I loved that I can come up with
off the top of my head:
1. The Phantom Tollbooth, by
Norton Juster- This book defies categorization. It is just so clever, and I
pick up something new, each time I read it.
2. The Pink Motel, by Carol Ryrie
Brink- It’s been years since I’ve read this, but I liked the illustrations, and
how it combined reality and fantasy for a fun story.
3. Peachtree Island, by Mildred
Lawrence- The ultimate feel-good book, it made me want to pack my bags and move
to a peach tree farm.
4. Half Magic, by Edward Eager-
The perfect fantasy book. Who doesn’t wish they could find a magic talisman?
5. Wally the Wordworm, by Clifton
Fadiman- My dad gave it to me when I was little, and that would have been
enough of a reason to enjoy it, even without all the clever wordplay.
I’ll stop with these five, but I
could go on and on…
The Little House series
Little Women
Anne of Green Gables
The Secret Garden
I’m sneaking in two series because I usually read them as if
they were one book in many pieces. Laura and Jo and Anne were great friends and
people I admired. I loved life in a different time. I loved watching Mary
change even as her garden did. I’ve continued to love these books and have
re-read them all at least once as an adult. When my older daughter was born, I
read a lot while nursing, and I turned to these books and others from my
childhood. They were easy to read, familiar, and still entertaining.
How to narrow down those favorite books? Here is my short list.
1.The Richard Scarry books, especially the one with the bear and the breakfast dishes,is imprinted forever in my memory.
2.The Little House Books count as 1 for me as well, as I always read all of them in order, even Farmer Boy, every time.
3.The Trixie Belden series, I prefered her to Nancy Drew. I think I was drawn to the close ties between Trixie and her friends and siblings.
4.Little Women -Jo was my favorite, of course.
5. And in 6th grade our small town librarian handed me The Neverending Story by Michael Ende and I was transported and enchanted. Flee from the movie, it is terrible, includes only the 1st half of the book and Mr. Ende faught unsuccessfully to have the name of the film changed when he saw how terrible it was.
I had an outstanding English teacher as a freshman in high school and almost all of my favorite books come from the assigned reading I did for that class. Among the top five from my childhood, I would count three: A Separate Peace by John Knowles, which awakened my sensitivity to the tragedy of war and the frightening idea of the draft; Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, which drew me in and captivated me with the deep emotion of the characters, then left me stunned by the surprise ending; The Last Enchantment by Mary Stewart, that was an exploration of the life of a young Merlin as he reached adolescence and discovers his true ability.
Two additional books that I would count in my top five because of the impression they left would be The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, a classic that teaches a pivotal lesson in compassion. And finally, for the humor and the novelty of the story, Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing was unique for its time and told of characters that were much like me and my friends and family.
Guess who just won another copy of Cindy’s book to share with friends? You did, Mar! Congrats!
Thank you Christina and Cindy. I’m going to ask our neighboorhood middle school’s PTA if I can make a presentation to help launch a mother-daughter book club there to encourage girls to read this summer.
I loved the Oz books too Mary, although I didn’t discover them until I was reading to my own daughter. I didn’t know they existed until I went to see Gore Vidal speak and asked what he recommended for children. The Oz series was top on his list as well as books by E. Nesbitt.
Congratulations on winning Mar! And And what a thrill it was for me to read your comments about how you’re sharing Book by Book. If it encourages more mother-daughter book clubs in the world, I’m so happy.
What a great idea Mar. Email me at info(at)motherdaughterbookclub(dot)com if you need any stats on reading to back up your presentation.
My earliest memory of reading is a Maggie Muggins book, a collection of short stories now out of print. Each ending was happy and exactly the same. The last line of every one was “I don’t know what will happen tomorrow.” It always sounded so optimistic.
Next came Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys mysteries series. Before I was twelve I read and re-read Zane Grey. My grandmothers book shelf was full of old books and at elven I read anything I could get my hands on.