book club

A few years ago, I made a resolution to read a book a month in order to keep my mind fresh and to develop the habit of reading. I so enjoyed this new hobby that I decided to offer the same challenge to my students. And thus started Mrs. Freeman's 8th Grade Book Club. At the end of each month, those students that completed a book during that month get together during study hall, talk books, and partake of a little snack.

This month I made gingersnaps (yum) and read David McCullough's John Adams.

I loved the book and was somewhat said to finish it and say good bye to Adams. McCullough is an amazing story-teller and an awesome writer. He blends Adams correspondence into the story beautifully making vivid and dynamic portraits of real people in history. There were a few parts where I felt the book dragged a little. By far, the most compelling parts were about John and Abigail's marriage (a remarkably faithful and loving relationship) and Adams' relationship with Jefferson (very on-again-off-again). Adams was truly a remarkable man with an amazing amount of integrity. At the end of the book, McCullough cites the inscription that Adams had engraved on his family's sarcophagus: "This stone and several others have been placed in this yard by a great, great, grandson from a veneration of the piety, humility, simplicity, prudence, frugality, industry and perseverance of his ancestors in the hopes of recommending an affirmation of their virtues to their posterity." Adams' humility and willingness to sacrifice everything for virtue and patriotism is truly admirable.

(I heartily recommend the companion book to John Adams also by David McCullough, 1776. It is one of my favorite books and an easier/shorter read than John Adams.)