Book club 1

Yesterday was my first "book club" meeting. I have never been in a book club so this was a new experience for me. I assumed the obvious..... we would agree to read to a certain point and then refelct on it during our meeting, and that's how it went. So for our frist meeting we agreed to read chapters 1-10 of Mocking bird, by Kathryn Erskine, and reflect on it. Well when I began the book I was so into it that I could not put it down and ended up reading the entire thing straight through. Some of the other girls said they felt the same way and some also read ahead. So one girl made a point that it was kinda weird because we were all at different points in the book. We still just decided to focus on chapters 1-10. We all really liked the book but it seemed that we all perceived parts of the book in different ways, which is fine. So my first experience of a book club meeting was pretty much what I expected but with a little awkwardness honestly.
But like I said above, the book was great! So let me tell you a little about it based on chapters 1-10 that were assigned for this first book club meeting....
This book, Mockingbird, is written from the perspective of Caitlin, a young girl with autism, who just lost her older brother in a school shooting, after also loosing her mother in the previous few years to cancer. Because this is written from Caitlin's perspective we have such a strong insight and connection to her instantly. We see how she tries to process through the grief and huge change in life from loosing her brother, how she is aware of the distress in her father and is trying to cope with that all while having the normal pressure of being a young girl with autism in a public school.
Key parts of chapters 1-10 that were discussed in our meeting was how overwhelmed she must be, how she is coping and expressing herself through the writing and behaviors, and her focus on the literal meaning of words. Such as "soon" and "next year". Which is a classic autism trait.

PS- I am not sure how specifically I should go into details of the book based on the fact that many readers of this blog may not have read the book and because I am under the impression these book club blogs should reflect more on the actual book club meetings and not so much the content in which it is based on (that being the book). But if my blog readers have not read Mockingbird, then I hope my brief summary gave you a general idea of what our book club meeting was about.