March Book Club: "Rules" by Cynthia Lord

Our book club for March will meet on Thursday, March 5, and we will be discussing the book, Rules by Cynthia Lord. This Newbery Honor Medal book is one of the books nominated for the Virginia Readers Choice award for 2008-2009. It has also received many other awards--too many to list them all here. The story is about a 12-year-old girl named Catherine who has a younger autistic brother, David. The title of the book comes from all the rules Catherine establishes to help David understand and interact with his world. For example, one rule is: No toys in the fish tank. I'll bet you can guess why she has this rule! Catherine loves her brother and is sensitive to his needs but she is also growing impatient with the responsibilities and embarrassment he brings. Catherine often accompanies her brother to his therapy sessions at a clinic. One day at the clinic Catherine befriends a wheel-chair bound boy, Jason, who can only communicate by pointing to small word cards. Catherine uses her drawing skills to make additional word cards for him and their friendship gradually grows. Catherine experiences some of the same discomfort with Jason that others do in the presence of her brother David. This gives Catherine the opportunity to explore her own thoughts and feelings and begin to look at her world differently. This is a tender and heart-warming book which the author says is loosely based on her own experience raising a son with autism.

February Book Club: Owen & Mzee + Henry's Freedom Box

Our February meeting of the Ashburn Kids Book Club was very busy! We did two books for the month. They were: Henry's Freedom Box by Ellen Levine and Owen & Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship by Isabella and Craig Hatkoff.

Henry's Freedom Box retells the true story of a 1849 Virginia slave, Henry "Box" Brown, who desired freedom so badly he devised a method of escape--he mailed himself to freedom by shipping himself in a wooden crate from Richmond to Philadelphia. The wonderful illustrations are by the award-winning artist, Kadir Nelson. The evocative illustrations are the perfect accompaniment to the simple text. Often we think picture books are just for young readers but this book is a good example of a picture book format written for older readers.

Owen & Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship tells the story of a baby hippo, Owen, who was orphaned in Kenya as a result of the 2004 tsunami. He was rescued and taken to an animal sanctuary where he formed a most unlikely friendship with a 130 year old Aldabra tortoise, Mzee. The book is illustrated by wonderful photographs that chronicle the whole amazing story. We were able to watch a documentary film about Owen & Mzee downloaded from their website. It was amazing to see such unlikely animals--a mammal and a reptile--form a lifelong bond of friendship. It's hard to explain how this would happen but perhaps the author's simple explanation is the best one, "Science can't always explain what the heart already knows: Our most important friends are sometimes those we least expect."

Both of these books have been nominated for the 2008-2009 Virginia Reader's Choice Award for grades 3-5.