Book Club Will Meet on Monday
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Blaine County Library’s Book Club, Free People Reading Freely will meet on Monday, May 6 in the Blaine County Library at 7:00 p.m. They invite any interested book enthusiasts to join them in discussion of whatever they are currently reading.
To discuss their April book experiences, Free People Reading Freely used the six-word story protocol as an entry point. Librarian Valerie Frank shared her reading of My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier. To describe how this young adult historical fiction novel realistically depicts what happened in the American Revolution, she penned these six words: “War, brother, choices, freedom, desperation, death.”
Book club discussion leader, Donna Miller, who had read Eleanor and Park, a young adult novel featuring two star-crossed misfits by Rainbow Rowell, wrote: “Two find love despite multiple obstacles.” Mary captured one of Margaret Atwood’s themes in The Handmaid’s Tale with her six-word synopsis: “Religion weaponized to oppress modern times,” while Amanda summed up The Hunger Games with “Surviving a world within a world.”
Ellen Savage shared her six-word synopsis about The Rain Watcher, a novel by Tatiana de Rosnay: “Beware, flooding rivers cause family stress.” And Barb Ranstrom, who had read Fallen Angels, captured not only her own experience with the war but that of Walter Dean Meyers’ protagonist: “Vietnam War really, really sucked.”
Although the six-word memoir began as a narrative platform for telling a personal story in only six words, the strategy serves as a versatile analysis and comprehension tool for multiple content areas. As literary response, the six-word story inspires conversation around a big idea. It is also a way to capture and distill the essence of an author’s main characters or main ideas.
