 Welcome to Encompass Live. This is Krista Burns at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Library Commission's weekly online event that we've been doing since January of this year, 2009 was when we started. We cover also the Nebraska Library Commission activities, library topics, anything of interest to Nebraska librarians. We have sessions done by NLC staff. Also, we have guests that come in sometimes. We do these every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time so you can attend live if you want to. We also record everything so you can listen to recordings if you're not able to attend our live sessions. Okay, this morning we are doing how to lead a book group for adults or kids. And we have Lisa Kelly here from the Library Commission and Vicki Wood from Lincoln City Libraries to take you through all of that. Great. Welcome. Thanks for joining us this morning, whether you're live or listening to this later. Vicki and I did a session last fall at NLA on this and it seemed like it was something worth reprising because Vicki and I are old book group folks. I've been in a book group for 15 years, either leading. How about you, Vicki? Yes, I think well actually I'm embarrassed to say I'm in several book groups but my oldest one has been about 15 years also. Great. Well, Vicki does the training for the Lincoln City Libraries, one book, one link, one book, one link and leaders. And she was a great choice to work with because her perspective is a little different from mine. She works with kids, with young adults and I work purely with adults. So we had a great session at NLA last year I felt and as a result Vicki joined my book group. So we have book group tomorrow night as a matter of fact. Anyway, we're just going to have a conversation. So I would like for you all will try to be mindful of what you want to say or have questions about because truly this is a conversation. We don't have a lot of things to show you. Just some websites that might be helpful to you and then we're going to promote our own book club kits that both of our libraries offer. So it's really going to be helpful to be interactive with us today. So if we say something that you particularly have a question about, want to take exception with, don't agree with. We would be happy to hear from you because we only have our opinions and basically that's really what I want to encourage you all to get books going to maybe get out of a rut if you're in one or to get some fresh ideas if you have a book group and perhaps you just need a jump start. So that's the purpose of the session this morning and please ask away or comment or disagree with us. If you do have a question and a comment, we're kind of cruising along on talking here and we don't notice it. Use the little hand raising icon in the top of your interface next to the green check mark that'll let us know as a little indicator that you want to say something that you have a question so that we don't miss it. Go ahead and click on that and I'll notice that. Thanks. Yes, we'd be happy to hear from you. So I've just got some questions. Vicky and I are going to toss them around and we'll add our opinions and please comment. So I want to ask really about optimum book group eyes, what we think that is, maybe what's too big, what's too small. And then within that there are sometimes folks who are conversation dominators. And then I want to talk about the content of the group in terms of women and men or that sort of thing. So Vicky, what do you think is the optimum? Well, I think when we talked about this last time, we talked about the fact that if your group is composed of 15 individuals that you can probably expect at any given time for about half or a little bit more to show up just because of the busyness of people's lives. Different people have different commitment levels to their book groups too. Sometimes I see it as really, you know, if I read the book, I'll show up. And some people are very committed and they read the book every single time and, you know, there's just different levels of that. So I think if you go over 15 and then you have everybody show up, you're in a little bit of a crazed situation. Plus if you have space constraints where you're meeting, it's difficult. But I think a book group size of 12 to 15 is a good size for an adult type of a book group. And you get bigger than that and it's hard to have discussions. Yeah, I guess I would only offer that for me that would be too big because I'd find you'd have two conversations probably going. Sometimes it's difficult to keep one conversation going with just eight people. Right. So Vicki says 12 to 15, I would probably go smaller than that and say eight-ish is pretty big. Six to eight would be my range. Yeah, I'm thinking 12 to 15 assuming that six to eight would come at any given time. Okay, okay. So they would be on your list and be part of your book group that you would assume that at any given time, especially around holidays or in the summer, you're going to have a lower. And that's true for our book group as well. I think that, yeah, we've nailed it. Yeah. But in conversational mode, I think six to eight is pretty maximum. Yeah, because you don't want the dreaded side conversation. Yeah, we both share that. Those are terrible. And yes. What about single sex or coed book groups? How have you found that to be in your experience, especially now that you're in a coed book group? Well, I find the coed book group is extremely rich in terms of getting a different kind of perspective. And I know that's a real stereotype to say men and women think about things differently. But you know, they really do. And I really love being in a group where there are men. And I have been in a group where there is a token guy. Usually the husband of somebody that and yeah. And I find it adds a real richness to it. But try finding men that want to be in book groups. It's not easy necessarily. I worked really hard to get men in my book group. But once I got them, they've been pretty devoted to stick around. Well, and I think that if you have that as an expectation and if you have that as something that you want in your book group, you do have to be a little bit more careful in terms of your casual chat. I mean, I'm in a book group that's all women. And one of the favorite things in the book group when we're done talking about the books is talking. We're laughing at our husbands, the foibles of our husbands. Which, you know, is not something that you would want to do. I mean, that's off the record, you know, of course. But I mean, that's kind of a woman bonding thing that happens. And I think that, you know, that having men in your book group is something to really, that's interesting to strive for. But I can also see that some women might feel like they want that as their special kind of space. And if they wanted to limit it to women only, that would be a legitimate thing too. But I think you kind of have to have agreement among the book group members about what they wanted and what their expectations are. So it's important to know that if you're just starting up a group, then you need to give some thought about gender content, who you want to include. And I think Vicki and I have talked about this before, that the chemistry of the group is amazingly significant. And there's no telling what one person joining the group could really do to wreak havoc in the group. So I guess I'm thinking about this is a discussion of pretty intimate book group readers. Now there are certainly much larger discussions, like one book, one link, that are going to be just a one-time book discussion. So what we're talking about is a reoccurring book group and how you really want to build faith and trust in that group. Almost a confidentiality in some respects. Because people might share something in that group not intended to be widely known. So I think we can't take that too significantly, but you really have to pay attention to those things. Well, I know there's book groups where people actually have to be voted into the group. Like they come for a trial. I've heard about that too. And then I know there's other groups who are extremely casual and say bring your friends, bring whoever you want. And I'm in a book group like that. And the dynamic is changing all of the time, which is fine with me. But I know that the people view that different ways. And some people think that if you keep the same members through all your years that it will always be the same. And it will be in some senses, but people do change. One person might leave, a new person might come in. And it really does, it changes the chemistry. And I think that you have to be aware of that because some groups just click and they do really, really well. And everybody is, you know, are kind of on the same page about their book group. And the problem is when you get someone that's different than that and then that sometimes creates problems. In your casual book group, or which do you find yourself preferring since you have a couple of options. You've got more intimate book groups and then that casual drop-in book group. Personally, I prefer a much more serious book group. And you know, I've stayed with my old book group because I like the people in it and it's kind of a loyalty thing. But I don't get as much out of it in terms of the reading and the talking about the book as I do with the other book group where it's much more committed. I mean, I feel like it's more committed, it's more structured and there's more book discussion and that's more satisfying for me personally. But I know that there are other people who are satisfied if you talk about the book for 15 minutes. I mean, that's just what their need is. So it really varies by the person, I think. Absolutely. Okay, how about what are the differences in leading book groups of different ages? And for those of you who are out there maybe thinking of turning a young adult book group for the summer, maybe taking advantage of the one book, One Nebraska Kids that's available this summer and you're thinking, this might be a good summer for us to get into that. How do you address and you brought some really great friends last fall? Yeah. When you're leading a kid book discussion or a young adult, what's your best counsel and advice for that? Well, when I train our new facilitators for our parent child book groups that we have at the library, I make a big point of talking about the job of the facilitator is much more difficult, I think, than with adults. Adults understand about forming ideas and speaking ideas and kids really don't necessarily have that capability. Now, some kids in Lincoln Public Schools, for instance, have been discussing books since they were in second or third grade and they get it. Other kids really don't understand. So you need to ask lots and lots of open-ended questions. Kids are also very focused on themselves and their own lives and so it's really important that you bring in some personal experiences. So with my leading some of those groups, some of the best questions, what would you do if you were in any place, that there's a crisis in the book or have you ever been in a situation where you felt like that? Those kinds of questions tend to elicit more discussion. And of course, that's also something you have to be careful of because you don't want to be probing into the kids' personal lives and having them express things that they may not be comfortable with. It's a good way to get them to interact with the text more by trying to bring some of their personal experiences in. Have you ever had a kid say something that really derailed the conversation and you had to bring it around? Oh, definitely. We had it happen one time at a book group that we were in where the mother was there and the parents had recently separated. It was a story about, actually it was a dog story, but there was a divorce in the family and it kind of evoked some things for this child that she wanted to talk about, which I think was fine, but I think the mother was a little wary or embarrassed about it, but I think for the child it was probably a good thing to talk about some of that stuff. So when the kids are a book group, are the parents usually there also kind of on sidelines? It really varies a lot. By the book group it's that chemistry thing. There's some where parents really dominate and the facilitator has to step in and let the kids have a chance to talk. And we have other ones where the parents kind of do sit on the sidelines. So obviously the best of all worlds is equal participation by parents and kids. I'm always fascinated by when kids really agree with their parents and when they really disagree with their parents. Because that to me is interesting. The parent and the child read the same book. And they're coming to the discussion with either very much in agreement or very much in disagreement. And both of those things I think are very interesting and make for interesting discussions. And we do explore that as part of our book discussion. And they've all read the same title, mostly in your Lincoln City book groups. It's all the same. Exactly. It is actually, there are themes and we select the four book ahead of time. And so the parent and child take home, they can take home their own copy. They can read it together. They can read it aloud together. What's the frequency of that? Once a week for five weeks during the summer. Just the summer time. Mostly June and the beginning of July. Is it part of the summer reading program that you offer? It is part of it. It's a more in-depth component of it. From that program we've had three groups that have spun off to be year-round groups. There's one at Gear, there's one at Anderson, and there's one at South Branch. Wow. And a lot of the parents that complete the summer book groups move into those groups in the fall because they really enjoy the experience and they want to continue to have that experience with their kids. I'm going to ask you all, just because I want to pick up our conversation a little bit, would you just checkmark yes if you're currently in a book group or you're running a book group right now? Would you just let us know by checking yes? Clearly we're just going to chat, but I'd like to hear. Oh my goodness. Okay. The three of you are in a book group or leading a book group? And the rest of you are probably... Okay, let me ask one more question then. How many of you are currently interested in starting a book group in your library? And if you could just click yes. Okay. Two. Okay. Excellent. That's great. Okay. Well, those of you who are interested in starting, please be mindful of whatever questions you might have if we don't address something. We'll try to get through what I think are the high points, but I'm glad to know that and thanks for letting us know. All right. Well, how to select a title? How to go about selecting a title? And from the interlibrary loan perspective, I've had people ask me some things and I'm sure you're a reader advisor. How do we go about selecting a book? How far in advance? What about the democracy of selecting within a book group? And then last but not least, and we got some fair discussion on this, do you allow genre fiction? And when I say, I mean, mysteries, romance, fantasy, do you think that's relevant for a book group? So what do you have to say about book selection? Well, I think once again, it very much depends on the group. I mean, I know there's book groups that only read Jane Austen and there's book groups that only read British literature. I know a book group of that like that in Lincoln. And, you know, but I think that a lot of people probably wouldn't want to be that limiting. And what I think works best in my years of being in book groups is to rotate it among the members for selection. And I also think it's good to have a mix of fiction and nonfiction. And so that's, I just think works best because then you get exposed to lots of kinds of books that you wouldn't normally read, which is the upside and the downside of book groups. And you just let's just say that right out. If you don't want to be to read things, if you have your reading list, your life list, and you know what you want to read and you don't want to be derailed by reading things that you don't like or that you would never read and you don't wouldn't enjoy that, then you shouldn't be in a book group. Because that is one of the great pleasures and it's also one of the great drawbacks of book groups in my opinion is that you get exposed to lots of things and I like that. But I know that there are other people who feel like they're wasting their time reading things that they didn't select. And I've heard book group people in my club say that is why I'm in this group because otherwise I would only read mystery, mystery, mystery, mystery. And so you do have to make a commitment to say, I realize I'm going to read things I don't really want to read. So I would normally have not bit. And I second your opinion about the fiction-non-fiction mix and I keep an excel list actually and I keep track of who's chosen, what books they chose, and then I can kind of go around and see whose turn is next again. And I give them quite a bit of advance notice because most of our readers are fiction readers and I make them choose one fiction and one non-fiction. And they have trouble with the non-fiction title. And our criteria is you have to have, the library has to own some copies as well. Some people always go by their book and you can certainly have your criteria but when you have democratic selection process be sure to be clear with your selector what their criteria is. I've had people say that 500 pages is that too long for a book group. So maybe your group needs to discuss very democratic criteria for selecting. Well, and I think it makes a lot of sense to choose your book, say, six months or a year in advance rather than waiting until the end of the meeting and saying, okay, what are we going to read next? I was in a group like that and then one person would just go, let's just read this. And that person shows almost everything. Yeah, that's not good, I think. And I think that you get a more balanced list if you're looking at it as a whole year or six months or however. And I know one group that actually brings, they have a selection meeting and they actually bring all of their, they bring the ones that they want to read and then they try to sell it to the other book members and then the book members sell out. And I think that seems like a good, they bring two things and they say, here's why we should read this book and whoever does the best job of selling their book gets to read the book, which I think is a great way of doing it and then they schedule out the whole year. That's interesting. I like that. We also integrate into my book group and the One Book One Nebraska and the One Book One Lincoln and that takes care of selecting for two months. Right. We meet every other month because all the mystery readers get a little peevish when they can't get back to their mystery. So, you have to decide the frequency that you want to get together as well. And I just have a note about selection. I would never choose a book I never read. How do you feel about that? I know there's lots of good websites out there that are good for selecting, helping to select books. I mean, there's books that lead themselves more to book discussion and other books. Right. One of the complaints in one of my book groups is that the books are always too depressed. Can we read something not depressing? And so we did. And then we had nothing to talk about. And, you know, that's one of the, you know, I don't find the books depressing. I mean, I don't feel that way about them. Maybe I don't get it emotionally involved, but you have to have some meat to something in order to discuss it. And especially when you're building book groups for kids, this is a fine line that you have to walk because you don't want all to be doom and gloom. When you have kids, we always try to mix up the genres to get a lot of different kinds of literature in there. And then ones that will appeal to boys and to girls, which is a little bit more present when you're a child and when you're an adult. But in order to have a discussion, you have to have something to discuss. And sometimes that means that there's a controversy or a big conflict or something in the story. And that's important. That's an excellent segue. We didn't cover the genre fiction. So to have something to talk about, can you do that with mystery, romance and fantasy? Do you think you can do it? Well, I know that we have a young adult group at Isley Branch that is a fantasy group and it's a big group. There were 22 kids in it last summer. And they are devoted fantasy readers. And I think they have everything in the world to talk about. They're into fantasy. They've read a lot of the classics in the genre and they have things to compare to their young adults so they're talkative, they're thoughtful and I think you could do that. And I think the same could be true for mysteries if you have people that truly that is their passion. And that is what they're interested in. We tried doing a mystery and it was a P.D. James mystery in my group and P.D. James is a wonderful writer. But once again, there was just a limit into what the things that we found to talk about in that book discussion. But I could see that it could work for people that were passionate about that particular topic. So I'm going to get you to answer this question. Would you ever pick a book that you hadn't read? I would. Okay. I would. Especially if I had read a review of it or heard from word of mouth from other people that it's a good book and it's a good discussion book or it was an author that I knew. But say you finished it and you went oh I'm so regretting that. I can't believe I made my book read that. I think it's okay. I would move on. I would be okay with it if that worked. That happens. All right. All right. Now this is a book group phenomenon that always comes up in the literature that I read in all the conversations. Do you eat or do you not eat at a book group? And I especially want to hear about kids in this area. We consider food mandatory for our young adults. Our young adults especially. Food is mandatory at almost any time we have teenagers. Together we have food even if it's just chips and pop. For some reason it's the social lubricant of teenagers. With our younger kids we do a lot of we sometimes do food tie-ins. And so that's really fun. What are some examples? Well like we did fudge the book. Super fudge. And then we had fudge. These were in the days when we could actually bring baked goods into the library. Now we have to have pre-packaged goods but we can still do that. We've had things where we do icebreaker games with M&M. We've had different, we've done prairie pioneer stories where the leader has brought in some kind of food item that is featured in the book. We did a book called Fig Pudding and we actually had a leader who made Fig Pudding which is way above and beyond the call of duty. But if you think hard enough there are food tie-ins to lots of things. I know we did a group called The Dog and Pony Show and one of the group leaders brought in Puppy Chow which is basically powdered sugar chicken. I mean it's so simple and yet so nice and enhancing. So I think that it's less, with the kid book groups we try to incorporate it into most of it but it's not like a big food event. It's more like, you know. And then I was in a group in one of these book groups with parent child book groups at Bethany Branch where we alternated bringing snacks so each pair, it was their turn on a different week and one brought the snack and one brought the drink. But certainly you're meeting for 45 minutes food is not essential. It depends on the time of day. We were meeting at 7 o'clock at night so everyone had eaten dinner. You get all sugared up at the end of the night. But I know in adult book groups that food is very central that there are ambitious book groups who also cook according to the book group. So if you're doing a book that took place in India you're having Indian cuisine and you know these people have way more time than I do. My book group used to be like that too. We read The Bean Trees by King Solver and somebody made bean soup and we read The Chamber by Grisham and there were Eskimo pies and we all had to eat Eskimo pies so if there's an obvious food theme in a book it can be very fun to play out. It can be very fun but you certainly don't want to make it obligatory because it can get to be too much. And I will mention that in that particular adult book group it put unnecessary pressure on some people they didn't want to host the group because they weren't themselves cooks and they felt real pressure because they didn't want to host it then and felt badly that when their turn came around they couldn't host. I guess I'd caution all of you who are having it in your home that you don't want to think about neutral locations for those folks who feel they can't host it. We rotated who hosted based upon who picked the book. We did too for a long time. Yeah, so that went together. But we had one member who really felt I don't really want to have you in my home and I don't cook. So that put undue pressure on that member. So be mindful of what that is for your book group. Well and people don't have to meet in homes either. Sometimes people meet in restaurants, but typically meeting at home like we do something usually around the holidays where we meet one time in a restaurant and just have a fun thing. I mean we've met at coffee houses before because we had a woman that had a small apartment and couldn't fit everybody in her house. So yeah, meeting outside of homes of course is a possibility and if you're at a restaurant then nobody has to worry about preparing anything. And one last food note. I discovered in my group that I have a social hour before and this was done to keep conversation on track really. So this kind of falls into another category. But the book group comes from 6 to 7 at my house and it is always at my house because most of the people live in my condominium building. So it's really easy to get to. So that we have wine and food from 6 to 7 and then from 7 boom, the book discussion starts. And that allows people who want to come catch up on the latest movie they've seen how your kid's doing how's the new job going along how they can get all that conversation out of the way and know that that's the time to do it. And then at 7, I really am pretty Millicent about staying on the topic and so far I think it's... I think that works brilliantly because in my other group we really vary. Sometimes we eat first and then talk and sometimes we talk and then eat and it always seems... things seem to break down at some point no matter how we do it and I think you've really got the key there of like here's our structured social time and here's our other time and you even physically move in your apartment so when you're in social time you're at a table and when you're in book group time you're on the couch and I just think it's a brilliant way to structure it and it works really well. People try to talk about the books sometimes during social time and I'll shut them down and I'll say not yet, not yet, keep it to yourself and they'll even try to talk to me before the book group and I'll say I want to hear it but I want to hear it when we meet. Because in my neighborhood we're all so close riding the elevators together It's easy to talk about now. I'm pretty militant about it but I think it's helped and so those are just my experiences and what I've learned from various Well, Lisa, that also kind of stags into the whole question and I'm not sure what order this is in but about having a leader versus not having a leader. Now with kids and young adult book groups they refer to the book group leader as a facilitator and that's really what they are. They are there to elicit discussion they're trained and they have very specific goals that they're trying to they're trying to have a discussion they're trying to have the discussion last a certain length of time they're focusing on certain themes and ideas in the book. With adults I've experienced a lot of things where people take turns facilitating the discussion and sometimes where the same person facilitates or where nobody facilitates and my experience once again has been that having a facilitator makes a big difference even if you move it around that person is just basically responsible for doing a little bit of research about the author a little bit of background about the book a little bit more about other books that author may have written and just, you know, I mean it's not like you have to spend a day doing research but just coming a little bit more prepared and also pulling yourself out of the discussion more so that you can keep the discussion flowing and one thing that I think is really lost kind of in the art of conversation and also becomes lost in book groups sometimes it's kind of following an idea to its conclusion people tend to change the subject a lot and I think that it's a good job of a facilitator to say hey are we done talking about this yet are we ready to switch gears do you have time to put their two cents worth in about certain topics or parts of the book and I think that's difficult and I think some people are better at it than others so if you have someone in your group who kind of rises to the top and that would be the person probably who's pretty serious, pretty devoted and enjoys that role then that's a great role now there would be people who may not want to be in that role all the time because they want to be more of a participant sometimes and that helps a lot and I think that it makes people take it a little bit more seriously you make lots of really wise points now in our book group there are people who say I will choose but I don't want to lead you will lead it and they're speaking to me and I have no problem with that I am controlling my natures and I really wanted to go a certain way but I really feel responsibility for the group you come because they read the book and maybe I'm an education major I have a curriculum mind towards that and in that tone people are also my friends and I care about them they've spent some time reading the book that's why they came so I feel a bit of a responsibility so ahead of time I will send out usually the author's website sometimes there's a website just for the book if there's a movie tie in sometimes that's interesting and sometimes there's NPR interviews or something with the author that you can listen to ahead of time and I will send those out and often those really do oh that's why the author lives there that makes perfect sense that they would make that setting there or that author is a nurse and they had practical advice about that kind of thing so in that kind of background information can add so much to your experience of reading a book and I've also found that sometimes coming out of a book discussion I have a really different perspective on the book than I had going in that's magic to hear other people's points of view but also people can bring bring something to the discussion that you didn't get out of that book and also all that extra material can too if you know something about the author's background and where the story came from I mean those things all add a lot to the book discussion I think okay here's something Vicki and I are facing tomorrow we have a book that we both read and neither of us liked it we have nothing but just ridiculously critical things to say about this book and celebrating my birthday Damana I thought well dang why do we have to talk about such a crappy book on my birthday so I think it bears witness to what do we do when we what do we do when the book just dang you know how do we prepare what kinds of comments do we bring I think this is practicing really good practical advice especially as the leader Vicki was asking me what are you gonna do Damana how are you gonna do prepare I think that when that happens in my group and I think Lisa agrees with this and I certainly train all my book group facilitators that work with kids to mix negative comments at the beginning I mean it's okay at the end but if you start out a book group on a negative tone like I really hated this book then the people who like the books aren't gonna say anything especially kids really is bad for kids this is actually a pointer that Leigh passed on to me from a McAlvacot discussion that she was in that you can give negative comments but you always have to wait until the end and we have found it to be very very important I also say absolutely this is my absolute rule about book groups is never start a book group by saying did you like the book yeah I would compare and then everybody goes around go yes no yes no yes no and then it's like okay well and to me there's a more deeper and more important question than liking a book and I think that if you are in a book group you're beyond that and I don't think it means you have to like every book and I don't think but I think that you really need to strategically kind of keep your comments to yourself you need to listen more you need to pay attention to what others have to say and then you know as the discussions winding down or you're halfway through if you say you know your problems with this book and here's what they are and you also to be really careful with the person who selected the book I mean they may have no emotional connection to it at all they just picked it because it sounded good but you know you don't want to insult somebody especially if it was like their favorite book ever it's just all diplomacy and I think the important thing is just kind of holding back and you know and then also being constructive and not just trashing and saying oh this is hideous and you know I think you have to be able to support your point of view just like you do in any other kind of discussion Conversationally I'll generally wrap up our book with who would recommend this book and who would you recommend it to and why and I'll never they've noticed that I never asked did you like it but I'll say would you recommend it and they'll say you know I wouldn't but or my father might really like that because of this theme and then it helps the application of who wasn't my cup but I know someone who really would have enjoyed it and I'm going to tell them about it and I think that's a fantastic question because I think that especially those of us that are in the book world where we're recommending books to people and we do readers advisory that we really have to think about that appeal what is the appeal of this book and I think when we book talk things we have to think of that and that's like a really central question that a lot of people miss out on it's all about I liked it I didn't like it and that's not the discussion and the appeal is and I think that's a fantastic question to ask because I think it's a great way to wrap up the discussion and one only once I didn't ask it because I so just like the book and one person said you didn't even ask about it but you're only human I gave myself away but another thing I would say and I've facilitated a group now for a while that I just really run through the characters I make lists of the characters and I talk about each character because it's such a simple way and I say this to those of you who look for those discussion questions and there aren't any and then people will often call our library and say do you have discussion questions on a book and there are some generic questions that I've sent out from book group blogs that I think are great but I often just find that if you start with the character and you just go down with the list of characters it really lends itself especially if you were drawn to a character or they made a poor decision with the deal breaker in the plot you can talk about that, why did they make the decision it it drives itself I think I think there's a lot of variety out there in terms of pre-made discussion I think it helps if you're getting your group off the ground that you don't know kind of the dynamic of the group yet and when we did the 13th tale I know I went online and got lots of discussion questions about pulling one from one and one from another and then there would be one that would be like all these questions are great and so you hit upon those sometimes where they really get at the heart of what you want to talk about during the book discussion do we have a question? yes Kathy just typed a question into the text chat there we're wondering if it would work to blog the book discussion for young adults and if you have suggestions for young adults well, I think that I'm kind of embarrassed I don't know more about this but it just started up at the gear branch we have a strong team group going and they're doing an online book club where they don't actually meet in person but they do their book club online and I don't know more about it and I wish that I did I can probably find out more about the person that you would want to talk about that is Sarah Dale Pearsall who is our team librarian at Gear Library and I will just give you her email in case you want to email her it's just s, period and then Dale Pearsall which is all one word d-a-l-e-p-i-e r-s-o-l at LincolnLibraries.org and I'm sure that Sarah would be happy to share with you more about how the online book group goes and our team book groups this summer we have a golden sewer group so we have teens who are choosing among the ten nominees or choosing four that they want to read we have last year we did a fun one which was books into movies and the kids all chose books that had been made into movies and then they watched the movies we have the fantasy group that I told you about we have one group that's very free form we have different books so with teens you know you're in that kind of nebulous area if you're a library system of course when you're choosing books you're giving a little bit of an endorsement to them teens can handle edgier material but you don't necessarily want to be throwing books out there that are going to cause a lot of parent concern or uncomfortableness among the group it also depends on your age range that 12 and 13 year olds in your group obviously there's a big difference between their sophistication and reading level and subject matter than you do if your group is predominantly 15, 16 and 17 year olds so I would look for award winners obviously and look at what's exciting and fun for kids and and go from there did that answer your question Kathy you feel like you got what you wanted from thank you you can just say yes or no do you have any other questions? thank you yes I'll just also mention that facebook has a book club application that I just learned about this morning so if your kids are on facebook that answers your question okay great thanks Kathy so if your kids are on facebook there's a book club application and so interestingly people can share that way and they do say in the press release that they don't think it takes a place a face to face but in social networking there's every kind of person who wants to meet however they want to meet I'm a face to face kind of person I would not be satisfied with an online book discussion but possibly kids would so you may want to ask your kids if they have facebook and if that's something they'd want to investigate as most kids do and it behooves you all to have facebook that's what they're doing speaking of online connections on the Lincoln City Library's web page if you want to connect into our summer information we do have a list of all of our book group selections there so if you go on to our main page and you click on the summer reading connection there will be something that says book groups and you can see what we've selected for the summer do you want to show them that we can actually see them now the Lincoln City Library we don't have this one bookmark but can you give her your website okay it's just linkinlibraries.org sorry Christa we're throwing a loop here anyway that has the list of books that we're going to be reading this summer and others are interested now to save time and energy with our kids book groups see what says be creative scroll down okay and then it says let's see keep going down oh it's still going okay sorry oh I want you to take a survey you can ignore the survey you can go back and follow that later Christa let's see there's teens read okay those are the teen book groups so if you click on that you're going to get the list of books there's the voting online for two of the groups that's for a new thing that we're doing this year is letting the kids vote online before they're doing the book group about which book they'd like to read that's kind of cool and then up at the top I think if you just click on the summer reading information go up a little bit more Christa okay so where yeah I don't see a direct connection to book groups but it should be in that summer reading information if you can click on it what we found with our kids' book groups is that we do a lot of series books we do a magic tree house American girl those kinds of things those are wildly popular I sort of fought against that for a few years because I was just curious and thought no kids need to read all these different things and they need to read this great literature and we just discovered that kids wanted to do that I mean the magic tree house books are full of history and information and they also have printed guides that go with them and so and the same with American girl I mean there's a lot of historical things and those are what the kids are familiar with and those are what they want to read so we've gone to much more sort of pre book groups and it saves our staff a lot of time and you've reconciled yourself yeah I got over it I got over it yeah right exactly check our online information so there is the list we have 20 some book groups going on this summer Lincoln about 300 families are involved it's a big deal it's a wonderful thing that's huge there's our read aloud please which is for second and third graders we have a Spanish language book group that meets during the summer downtown and then the other side is the reading together that's for fourth and fifth graders and their parents and then of course the teams doing their book groups without their parents imagine that I think that's fascinating we're getting to about the end of the hour and I'd like to just ask some reflection questions because I think we've gone over a lot about the particulars and I don't want to just keep hammering those because in the end you'll find what works for your folks you'll find what works for the people who've joined your group and I'm just passionate about book groups I think they'll survive every sort of social networking I think they'll survive everything I think that text is not dying I love the feel of a book there's nothing like cracking open a new book and I think that talking about books I just love it and I would never I think these are never going away and so that is why I want people to start or think about joining or leading a book group so I found some kind of interesting questions that I thought might be right one is how do you consider your book group a success how would you judge if things are really going well and if maybe things need to be adjusted what are the criteria that you would say that went great or that went poorly and I have found at the end of the night people have different judgments about that what would you think how do you know if it's going well well I know that the first time I went to your book group I was so excited and lunch the next day I was going on and on about it but my big my big thing was we talked about the books for an entire hour and a half like that was so awesome to me now other people might not think that's so awesome you know but to me that would that meant that book group was successful to me I think if everyone's respectful if everyone gets to say what they wanted to say and if you really run the book out I mean you got you got everything you could get out of your discussion I think it's successful and I think that you just have that feeling at the end that it's going to vary a lot for different people at different times but I think that's the pleasure and joy of it is that sometimes you're going to come out of the discussion and just think that was so great so good but you know there's always next time now what about the kids group how do you consider those successes well with the kids group sometimes it's really hard to tell because kids can tend sometimes we have really quiet groups and it's just like you know just trying to get anything out of them is really difficult what I find though is that kids will say things to me later a lot of times I think and I think that's a lot of the way that kids are an adult you start thinking you know about something you think about it and actually the beauty and the joy of it comes later it's not something that you feel immediately and I think with the book groups just getting the kids and parents together to talk about things that they may not want to talk about or they may have never talked about before to me that means the group is successful just that the parent child signed up to read together and the parent is making this say this is a legitimate thing and an important thing to do so it's not about the numbers yeah it's really more about I yeah and I don't I I we like to have good discussion but we don't have that expectation and it's always going to be the fantastic discussions we do you have a question but what can we answer for you do you want to chat something you can just type on that text chat button at the top more on the right side and let us know what your question is and while you're typing that I'm going to ask you another question but we won't stop reading before we answer your question so you can get that to us either on a microphone or in the chat I'm happy to answer that okay well while we're waiting for Rita's question oh okay talk about the dominator in the group one who won't let others talk oh Rita would have to bring that you know I've read things that I was a classroom teacher for a little bit and there's some obvious things that you can do and I was just reading some examples in my book blog when there's two people talking and something's going on or you're talking about a dominator something that I've done is to say Mary I haven't heard from you and Don I haven't heard from you and I will really call out people's names to say now we've heard a lot about Jan's opinions and I might just say stuff like that that would be my perspective I will call the names of people who literally haven't had a chance to say anything and sometimes I'll use a go around the room technique let's go around the room and everybody answer this question the dominator only gets their turn so sometimes you can employ that technique to make sure everybody says something and when it gets to their turn they might say well I don't know that I haven't answered we're going to come back to you then because I want you to answer it and you might really just force it if you have something to add for a dominator problem oh yeah because there are people who process much more slowly you know it's almost like when you speak a foreign language and everyone's talking so quickly that you don't have a chance to even form your response and so those people you really have to give a chance to but both of your suggestions are good ones and we use both of those in training to teach kids and I think it's one of the things that we do with our kid book groups is we do go around at the beginning and say tell me one thing that you found interesting or that you want to talk about and every child can come up with one thing usually and then I make little notes on the pad and always come back to that and I think calling out certain names and people really works well I guess those are our best suggestions Rita I hope that those are helpful to you and it helps to call if you can know all your book group members by name and probably a group of friends or community citizens call them out by name and then around the room technique you might just say tonight everyone's good suggestions maybe conversational get going yeah okay good that's an excellent question though and when you put a group of humans in a room you're going to get that and I think sometimes you do just interrupt and just say okay well you know what about that what do you think John and just cut the person off I mean I think that we have done that in our book groups before let's talk about some memorable book discussions what are successes or what books what are your maybe we'll just wrap up with this one what were your most memorable book club nights or days or afternoons with kids or either adults I have a few and you'll share some I remember one at the very beginning of my book group when we had this awesome chemistry and it was a book that was about kind of hidden things that happened in a small town and I had there's three sisters in my book group and it came out that they had all had this very similar experience with their high school principal who hadn't molested him or anything but he provided alcohol at parties for these kids and all three of them had experienced this but none of them had ever talked about it before and it came out in the book group and it was so interesting and so that to me really stands out because I just remember that being an evening where we were all just like wow that's a really big thing and the sisters felt like it was really a big thing too because they had somehow never talked about it one of my favorite book groups was The Night of Intimacy also not a lot of people showed up it was a Vietnam War theme book that one of a Vietnam vet had chosen for our group and everybody had very deeply seated in feelings that they never voiced and in fact when they voiced them to the group it became quite emotional and there was this level of confidence and trust in the group that just almost brought me to tears because I thought these people are really bearing their soul and they're bearing it to the book group because of the trust that we put into that group and I would never reveal anything about that even but just the generality of it was transforming and I liked that we found these things out about these people and they just made themselves raw to us sharing their thoughts and feelings and they really respected the people who shared what they did well when you think about it I mean people read for different reasons but one of the reasons people read is to see things through other people's eyes and to experience things that we can't really experience and the book group just takes that one step further so it's all about sharing and learning and if you're into that those are going to be really great moments for you because that's why you're in the book group is to share and so I think both of us had experiences where something deep was shared that made it so satisfying. Yeah, beyond anything I would have ever imagined. Okay, well Christus put some slides together that you will have as a part of this presentation that have websites and I would like to just go to the one where I just want to point out the last one, book club kits if we could. What I've included in these slides are some excellent resources and we've alluded to those throughout our discussion and this particular slide I'd like to pay attention to if you want to get a hold of multiple copies of books that are really geared towards book discussions and you're having trouble getting started and you want some ideas both from Vickie's and my library we offer book club kits and that just means they're all there self-contained, I need eight copies of this book you can hand them all out that night and the club is good to go so it's just the club in a box you can just get it right off the ground and get it going so pay attention to those websites if those would be helpful to you and contact either of us if you have additional questions we're almost at the top of the hour are there any last questions for either of us you've got our contact information if you think of something later don't hesitate to call us or email us we both obviously feel passionately about this so we would love to hear about your experiences and if anybody is trying to get book groups for kids off the ground you can email me or call me and I'll be happy to tell you we've been doing that at Lincoln City Libraries for 15 years, we started with three book groups and we've grown to the 20 that we currently offer Vickie's your person for that not that your person so you've got all of our contact information I appreciate your taking time to spend with us for 10.59 so I think we need to wrap up I just want to let you know also that all of these links that were in this PowerPoint that I just whipped through very quickly are in the commission's delicious account so you can go to our delicious account that'll be linked out of the recording when I put it up as well the NLC reference delicious account is live and book group but I'll give you a link for all that as well when we do the recording so I guess if there's no further questions right at the moment we can wrap it up thank you very much for attending I hope you join us next week when Lisa will be back again meet the librarians behind ready at nlc.state.ne.us if any of you use that email address you can see what we look like the other two folks, oh thanks Crawford we're getting some applause thank you so much thanks for joining us and if you think of questions later I sincerely mean it let us know because we would be most happy to respond to your questions and we'll let you know how our book group will perform tomorrow night you got a comment down here too thanks for a very informative session we love book discussions and you gave us some good ideas excellent thanks Laura thanks Laura thanks for joining us this morning we're giving groups or get them started we'd love to hear about how things are going thanks see you all next week bye bye