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Getting Started with Book Clubs (TEST)
Start a book club in your school or community! This package includes everything you need for your first three meetings.

The Language of Flowers
The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romantic expressions: honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, and red roses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful in communicating mistrust and solitude. After a childhood spent in the foster-care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings. Now eighteen and emancipated from the system with nowhere to go, Victoria realizes she has a gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them. But an unexpected encounter with a mysterious stranger has her questioning what’s been missing in her life. And when she’s forced to confront a painful secret from her past, she must decide whether it’s worth risking everything for a second chance at happiness.

Getting Started With Bookclubs
What’s included?
You’ll receive a welcome packet including our philosophy of parent engagement, alignment to Joyce Epstein’s Six Types of Parent Involvement, a parent survey, 10 reasons to have a parent book club and more! These sessions are all about community building. You’ll read and discuss Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman and The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. To help you organize and facilitate your meetings, we’ve included meeting agendas, discussion questions, community building activities and more.

Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman
ALA Best Book for Young Adults ∙ School Library Journal Best Book ∙ Publishers Weekly Best Book ∙ IRA/CBC Children's Choice ∙ NCTE Notable Children's Book in the Language Arts
A Vietnamese girl plants six lima beans in a Cleveland vacant lot. Looking down on the immigrant-filled neighborhood, a Romanian woman watches suspiciously. A school janitor gets involved, then a Guatemalan family. Then muscle-bound Curtis, trying to win back Lateesha. Pregnant Maricela. Amir from India. A sense of community sprouts and spreads.
Newbery-winning author Paul Fleischman uses thirteen speakers to bring to life a community garden's founding and first year. The book's short length, diverse cast, and suitability for adults as well as children have led it to be used in countless one-book reads in schools and in cities across the country.
Seedfolks has been drawn upon to teach tolerance, read in ESL classes, promoted by urban gardeners, and performed in schools and on stages from South Africa to Broadway.