2. Decide on a time and place to hold your book group. We recommend that you meet once a month. Don’t forget school vacations and holidays when you’re scheduling. Some book groups meet at the members’ houses and rotate their locations.
3. Once you have chosen your members, send them a note announcing your first meeting.
4. Hold an orientation meeting so that you can:
6. If you’re going to meet somewhere other than a house, make sure you have access to that space. This may mean contacting a custodian, or getting a key to the building.
7. Designate a member to be at the book group site 15 minutes prior to the meeting, and stay until all the others are safely en route home. You can rotate this responsibility.
8. Decide which members will be responsible for materials, snacks, and clean-up duties. You can rotate these jobs, or ask the host or hostess for that meeting to handle them.
9. Make sure you have all materials you need for any activities you have planned.
10. Keep lots of clean-up materials handy.
11. Kid-proof any areas that young children will use.
12. Decide ahead of time how the group will handle a child who attends without an adult.
13. Decide ahead of time how the group will deal with a member who hasn’t read the book.
14. Figure out how you can get multiple copies of your book. Libraries, schools, or bookstores may be able to help.
15. Leave time at the end of each meeting to settle on the next selection, assign jobs, and choose the next meeting location.
16. Most importantly, have fun! The best thing about a book group is that it helps get kids hooked on reading.
