What we are reading in our Book Group at Wentworth

Every Wednesday since January, Barbara Merritt, Scarborough School District head librarian for grades K-8, and I have co-hosted a book club held at Wentworth during lunch recess. The book clubs run 5 weeks and so far we've worked with 4th graders and today was our last time for grade 3.

When we met with the 4th graders, the book we read was The Dragon's Egg written by local author Sarah Thomson, who came and met with all the students at our final meeting. She was terrific and the children had ample time to ask her lots and lots of great questions.

The Third Graders just finished The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught her to Fly by Luis Sepulveda. An exciting adventure woven tightly around a strong environmental message, participants made a book trailer as their final project since we were not able to connect with the Sepulveda and ask if he was available to Skype with us. (He lives in Spain).

Do you know what a book trailer is? Similar to a movie trailer in format and
length, a book trailer promotes…a book. Making trailers takes some planning and lots of discussion. Students are asked to think about the book and pull out the most important parts. You don't want to tell too much and bore your audience, but you also want to keep them excited. As Mrs. Merritt explained, "You want to give just enough information so that when the trailer is over you can't wait to read the book!"

We would like to share our book trailers with you! If you want to see them, please stop in to the Wentworth Library and ask the staff to show them to you. The students did a great job.

Next week Barbara and I will begin meeting with Fifth Graders. We will be reading Rules by another local author Cynthia Lord.