Join the club! Here is a great step-by-step book for you and your mother. The Mother-Daughter Book Club is the story of a group of mothers and their daughters and how their relationships were strengthened and changed by starting a monthly reading club. The book includes guidelines, stories, anecdotes, reading lists, sample themes and related activities. In addition, it offers practical instructions for starting a book club while encouraging mothers and daughters to learn to talk openly with one another.

Children's Books Review Black Studies Review Kirkus Review Customer Comment Customer Comments lgarrett@txdirect.net , 06/30/97, rating=10: Anxiously waiting our first meeting. Give Shireen Dodson and the Mother-Daughter Book Club 10 gold stars. Complete instructions along with excerpts from their members makes this book a must for mothers interested in SHARING special times with their daughters and breaking the communication gap. The book comes with extensive reading lists and letters from a number of famous people from all walks of life. After reading the stories about their meetings and the closeness that can be shared between a mother and daughter through reading, my daughter and I set forth to organize a mother daughter book club in our small south Texas community.The book gave us ideas on how to start and form the club which we are in the process of doing and having our first meeting next week. With this book in my arms I am ready. Thanks Shireen for such a wonderful gift that you have shared with us. --Top Of Page-- Children's Books Review Children's Books Editor's Recommended Book, 06/01/97: Shireen Dodson's story of a year in the mother-daughter book club she started when her daughter Morgan was 9 is a wonderful tale and a perfect handbook for parents seeking a special activity to share with a daughter or son. Once a month on Sunday afternoons, Shireen, Morgan, and a group of nine other twosomes they selected together gather at a member's home to talk through a book they've all read. Each month a different girl takes a turn leading the discussion, the moms listen and respond rather than lecture. Often, youthful responses open a window into a daughter's heart; often, a mother's comments reveal a history her daughter never imagined. Woven throughout the book are wonderful "Books to grow on" lists and enthusiastic personal comments from each participating mom and daughter. Without a doubt, this is the best idea since the bedtime story. (For parents) --Top Of Page-- Black Studies Review Black Studies Editor's Recommended Book, 05/01/97: Shireen Dodson was on vacation with her family when she decided she needed to find "a way to spend some special time" with her daughter. What she did was start a mother-daughter book club. In this sweet little book, Dodson offers practical advice about starting a similar club. The heart of the book, though, is in the insights she offers about the benefits--the chance to explore ideas and feelings, to discuss each other's lives, and to establish what Dodson calls a "bridge of sharing" that involves both mother and daughter listening to each other. --Top Of Page-- Kirkus Review From Kirkus Reviews , 04/01/97: Searching for a way to "spend some special time" with her nine-year-old daughter that would "help us understand each other better," Dodson, the assistant director of the Smithsonian Institution's Center for African American History and Culture, hit upon the idea of forming a book club composed of mothers and their young daughters, who would work together to generate a reading list and then gather regularly to discuss what they had read. The idea was an immediate success. The group discussions, Dodson notes, "offered a unique combination of intellectual and personal sharing," bringing mothers and daughters (whose ages ranged from 9 to 12) closer together and allowing them to discuss some difficult issues in a nonconfrontational manner. The book is both a record of Dodson's experiences and a detailed explanation of how to form such a club. It includes a number of brief essays by the children in Dodson's group, short pieces by authors and teachers stressing the value of such groups, and reading lists provided by a variety of noted authors. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --Top Of Page--