1 Mom, 2 Boys, and a Big Classic Novel

A Peek Inside Our Mother-Son Summer Book Club

This summer, every Wednesday around 3 p.m., my backyard deck is the place to be. This is where I host my third annual Mother-Son Book Club.

Like many parents in the last few years, I became aware of our lacking education system—and frankly that it was not going to recover anytime soon. I began pointing my middle-school-aged sons towards classic books to supplement their education. It was easier than I thought.

Shemaiah Gonzalez and a couple of teenage book clubbers.

Serious Reading

My sons had become embarrassed at the literary choices for their age that either focused on bathroom humor or making out. They were interested in bigger ideas. Could this novel give them insight into the world around them? What was war? What was expected of them as they became adults?

They enjoyed reading stories of teens or young adults trying to figure out their place in the world. These stories gave them examples of what it would be like to persevere in trials and become the good men they one day hoped to be.

Of course, they didn’t articulate this. But these were the themes that captivated them as they read. And there was a slight sense that these were grown-up books. Books not meant for children. There was a bit of the forbidden that worked to my (and their) advantage.

I stressed from the beginning that it was perfectly normal not to understand everything the first time you read a classic. Classics are books you will reread many times throughout your life. Each time you will discover something new. They already knew this to be true, as they had witnessed me sit down with Frankenstein or Jane Eyre several times over the years.

How It Started

Three summers ago, when my youngest wanted to read Dickens’s Great Expectations and was surprised I had never read it, the Mother-Son Summer Book Club was born. At first it was just myself and my youngest. Our book club met in the car while my oldest was in trumpet lessons.

But my oldest grew tired of our inside jokes about Miss Havisham and how we spoke of Pip as if he were a friend to only us. The next summer, last summer, he joined us.

We read The Brothers Karamazov last summer. Of course, they didn’t understand all of it. I didn’t understand all of it! But we read it—all 880 pages. We all fell in love with Father Zosima and Alyosha, cringed at Fyodor, and I’ll never forget when my oldest came to book club saying, “Can we all talk about how Dmitri is a hot mess?”

This summer we are reading Moby-Dick. My sons are already enjoying what they call The Bromance between Ishmael and Queequeg and looking up the parts of the ship on the diagrams in the back of the book.

It is challenging to read with two teen boys with moods that are never in sync. I stay positive and remember none of those moods are about me or the book really. It’s just part of growing up.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations; Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov; and Herman Melville, Moby-Dick.

Keep It Going

Here are some of the ways I have structured our book club to make it as pain free as possible for my teen sons.

• Choose a book the adult has not read. It’s no fun for them if I come ready to teach a class. It is more so about the delight of exploring an epic book together.

• Figure out how many pages you will read a week. To calculate, we simply divide the number of pages by the number of weeks we have to read it. For Moby-Dick, we are reading 55 pages a week. One kid likes to read 11 pages a day on the weekdays. The other likes to read all 55 pages in one afternoon. Let them figure it out.

• Buy the same copy of the book. This is helpful when we refer to passages. We are all on the same page.

• Have snacks. I’m convinced one of my kids just comes for the snacks. Guess what? That’s okay. If that’s how I get them to read one of the greatest novels ever written, so be it. Last summer, Book Club Day was also Smoothie Day. Sometimes we made them at home, sometimes we met at the local Jamba Juice. This summer I’m playing it by ear and just put out whatever is “special” in our house at the moment. They are teens; they will literally eat anything.

• Make it as happy and pain-free as possible. When my kids were little, their dentist did not want them to ever be afraid of him. He used euphemisms such as “tooth pillow” and “Mr. Thirsty” to talk about the instruments. I try to use the same approach with epic classic literature. I never tell them they are wrong about something unless it’s huge. I more so use my high-school theater improv skills and respond, “Yes . . . and. . .” redirecting the conversation and still affirming their ideas.

• Make it short and sweet. Our book club tends to run about 30 minutes. Seriously. Their attention spans are short. It will get better and longer as they train their minds but for now, I don’t push it. Again, I want them to love the time together.

• Keep the format simple. I am not the teacher. I’m not reading criticism on this before I show up. I simply ask questions like, “What did you love this week?” I try to encourage them to underline their favorites throughout the reading so they can share them. “Is anyone confused about anything? It is good if you, as the grown-up start that one. Does anyone even like Fyodor? How is everyone related? What’s the quarterdeck?” They love having the tables reversed and being the expert.

We close each book club by reading the first page of the next section aloud together.  This gets us back in the story, enticing us to read further and frankly, they only have 54 pages left to read now.

Opening Minds

Do not underestimate your children. In so much of life, they are not challenged or treated as if they can contribute. When you do, it opens a door in their minds and souls. My sons make references to scripture, Marvel Comics, and real-life situations through our discussions. Literature comes alive when we share it together.

Each week, we take a selfie of us with our books to share on social media. We do this to celebrate another week of reading and also to show others online that this can be done. At the end of the summer, my sons are proud they have read on of the most difficult books to tackle. They refer to Zosima’s humility or Ilyusha’s friends often. We know we didn’t understand the entire book, but we aren’t afraid of it anymore. We know we will read it again.

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Is

Shemaiah Gonzalez

’s mother-son book club the answer to declining literacy?

Protesting the Decline of Reading

Also see

Lucy S. R. Austen

’s story of reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace with her family.

Reading ‘War and Peace’ in Both War and Peace