Another note about the Dear America series: My DD8 and I started a mother-daughter book club with their civil war series of 4 books. We invited 3 other pairs of girls/moms and each 'hosted' a discussion about their month's book. The Scholastic website has some great resources for hosting book clubs with Dear America books. They even have craft/menu/activity ideas for certain books. The last pair that hosted did charades with words from the Civil War time period, kids against moms - it was fun and got us talking about all the books again. And it happened to be right before the election, so we even discussed current events.
My DD8 loved the club and wanted to continue with another DA series. However, the other girls in the club, while gifted, aren't as big of readers, so by the fourth book their moms had trouble getting them to finish the books. We did buy a video based on one of the books though, so we may have a 'reunion' soon to all watch the video.
The original plan was for the mom/daughter pair to read each book together. I miss reading with DD8, so my motivation was mostly selfish ;-). As luck would have it, DD8 couldn't wait for me to be available, so she would 'sneak' the next month's book to her room and read it without me :-) Anyway, if you ever wanted to host a book club with your child, I recommend checking Scholastic's website for resources that make it easy.
