This is how our book club works. Students sign up for elective credit through our small charter school, they agree to the terms (read a book a month, attend the meetings to discuss, post discussion questions to the discussion board), and they completely control the books we read. We throw up about fifty books on the board (all suggestions from them) and then we choose two to read per month. As the facilitator, all I do is sit back and count the votes. Trust me, they can get upset if their book doesn't make the list!
I was pretty surprised by the book choices this year simply because they didn't seem to have a main theme. Last school year was the year of the zombie and we read more zombie books than we've ever read before. This year seems to be the year of the books - about-to-come-out-as-movies. Because we usually take a field trip to go see the movie of a book we've read, I think the students were trying to get as many on the list as they could. Here is the list:
100 Cupboards
The Princess Bride
Ender's Game
The Hobbit
Divergent (#2)
A Series of Unfortunate Events (#1)
Oliver Twist
Catching Fire
Unwind
Artemis Fowl (#1)
The first two, 100 Cupboards and The Princess Bride were the books chosen for October. And now we march forward and read the books. Stay tuned for The Princess Bride discussion!