How to Run a Book Club for Kids or Teens
Book clubs are a wonderful way for kids and teens to share their love of reading, and are a great way to meet other kids.
VPL has Book Clubs for Early Readers and Tweens, and Writing Clubs, but if you are interested of starting one on your own, read on!
VPL has Book Club Sets for Children and Book Club Sets for Teens. Each Set comes with 10 copies of the same titles and can be borrowed with any VPL card.
For more opportunities to write your own books, check out VPL’s Get Your Book in the Library Program for kids in K – 7 and Ink, a teen journal for writing and visual art.
If you are excited about starting your own book club, here are some resources, activities and icebreakers to keep a group of kids or teens having fun and staying engaged.
Getting Your Book Club Started
The Association for Library Service to Children’s blog provides step-by-step ideas for building a book club as a library program, but many of the steps can also work for at-home clubs. There is also another post aimed at creating a tween book club.
Read Across America’s Book Club Basics breaks ideas down into helpful and easily accessible information.
Penguin kids has information on starting a parent and child book club. We love their approach: FUN! FUN! FUN!
Even kids who are still working on reading independently can enjoy being in a book club. Jbrary provides a great sneak peek into the behind-the-scenes preparation of an Early Readers Book Club (just like the ones we do at VPL) for Grades 1-3. VPL also has sets for most of the titles mentioned in this blog.
Icebreakers
Icebreaker activities can help get kids talking and create an easy, participatory atmosphere.
Would You Rather Questions are a classic way to get kids talking (and moving) in a program.
Splash Learn has a full list of 30 icebreakers for kids.
Activities
There is so much you can do to connect your books to activities:
- Creating trivia questions about the book and having a competition
- Bringing in objects related to the story or characters
- Drawing characters from books and cutting them out, then turning them into popsicle stick puppets
- Creating a music playlist of songs inspired by book
- Baking treats inspired by the book
- Creating felt stories inspired by the story
You can find many more fun ideas for Tweens Book Club Extension Activities at Jbrary.
Getting Kids Talking
Discussion questions can be as in-depth or simple as you want them to be, depending on the children’s ages or interest levels. Emphasize how the different experiences people bring to a book can impact how they think about and enjoy the book. Try to keep questions open-ended to keep the conversation going!
Some sample questions include:
- What did you like most about the book?
- Did this book make you think differently about anything?
- What characters seemed the most like you? Why?
- What surprised you about the book?
- How did you feel after you finished reading the book?
- What would you have changed in the story?
Need more questions?
25 More Questions to Spark Book Discussions with Young Readers
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Kids, it is time to start writing and thinking creatively! Our fun writing activities will have you writing stories and poetry in no time. This 4 week program is appropriate for both advanced writers and beginners. For Grades 3-4.
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Kids, it is time to start writing and thinking creatively! Our fun writing activities will have you writing stories and poetry in no time. This program is appropriate for both advanced writers and beginners.
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