Book group at a distance

Sharing books as a family.

While I use the nickname Norfolkbookworm a lot it seems that I've managed to share this love of the written word with my nephew in Kent and as he gets older we are sharing more and more books.

Since before he was born we've indulged in book splurges on a fairly regular basis. These are great fun - we set a budget and then spend *ages* in a bookshop looking at all the shelves making piles of all the books that appeal. Once we've done this we find a cosy corner/table/sofa in the shop and carefully read the book blurbs and first pages to make our final lists. The books not selected are added to a list and looked for in the library or added to birthday or Christmas lists. My sister also tries to take him to as many events with his favourite authors as possible - highlights here have been Andy Griffiths, Tim Peake and Steve Backshall.

Last summer he recommended the 13 Storey Treehouse (and sequels) to me and I've spent many happy afternoons enjoying the craziness and imagination of the tales.

This autumn he enters Year 5 and his school sees reading as really important (hurrah!) and his class teacher has set a reading challenge - a list of 22 books has been drawn up and the children are encouraged to read 12 of the books during the school year.

This was such a coincidence as over the summer we'd discovered the wonderful lists created by the Books for Topics team - these have 50 books on them suitable for each year group and are a wonderful mix of fiction, non fiction and poetry titles.

As a family we've looked at these lists and have decided that although I'm in Norfolk and they are in Kent we're all going to read the same books and then either phone each other to talk about them or use social media.

Term started this week and so we've started the first book - The Umbrella Mouse by Anna Fargher. (Typically this book isn't on any of the lists but something drew my sister and nephew to it, and now that nanny has finished it and returned it with a thumbs up review, it seemed a good starting point!)

'Above all, we must be brave'

1944, and London is under attack. The umbrella shop that young mouse, Pip Hanway has called home all her life, is destroyed by a bomb, forcing her to begin a perilous quest to find a new home.

 But the only way to get there is by joining Noah's Ark, a secret gang of animals fighting with the resistance in France, operating beneath the feet of human soldiers. Danger is everywhere and as the enemy closes in, Pip must risk everything to save her new friends.

With my love of fiction set in wartime this book really appealed to me and using animals to tell a true story is a clever way to introduce deeper topics and history to my nephew. There are beautiful illustrations scattered through the text really which are really adding to the tale.

The Kent contingent of the book group are reading three chapters a night, with each member of the family reading a chapter aloud, and I am also limiting myself to the same pace so that we can share the story fully.  We may only have just finished chapter 6 but all of agree that the writing is so good that we really think we are in wartime London - my sister and I agree that we could almost smell the setting as we were reading.

We'll keep you posted on how the group reading goes and I hope to feature book reviews from my nephew as we go along - once he picks the nickname he wants to publish under!