Last June during our end of year meeting, the Temple School staff decided to form a book club. We started by creating a goal to coincide with our district's new Language Arts Curriculum. Literature circles and book discussions are a strong part of our new curriculum. We then decided we would not only continue to read professional books, which helped us with our teaching, we would also read books for pleasure and see where the discussions would take us. We learned that we don't all like the same types of books but that we all managed to find connections in the texts we were reading. We learned to think aloud with one another and to share some of our favorite passages. We also learned that while we often stop our students from getting off track while discussing a book, we had some of our most powerful discussions when we actually moved off track and tied our past experiences into the text. This helped all of us learn and appreciate what it is we ask of our student readers in the classroom. When one of us didn't like the book, we had to really climb through it. We empathized with our students when a text is chosen for them. It was a great experience and helped all of us achieve one of our school goals.

The last book we decided to read was The Buffalo Soldier by Chris Bohjalian. As luck would have it while visiting his web site we noticed that he was going to be speaking in Stowe, Vermont a mere three hours from Temple, NH and . . . . off we went!

We were incredibly lucky to find the Timberholm Inn. The owners, Darrick and Rich, were super and very knowledgeable about the area - and the inn itself was beautiful. The great room was huge and allowed us the opportunity to have meetings and socialize all together. And when the Arrington's Inn Traveler Magazine voted them as having "One of the Top Five Breakfasts in New England" they weren't kidding. We're still talking about the scrumptious breakfasts Rich cooked for us and Darrick served while we sat back and enjoyed watching the birds on the deck. We highly recommend a visit to the Timberholm Inn - tell them the Temple staff sent you!

Chris Bohjalian, author of Midwives, The Buffalo Soldier, Water Witches, Trans-Sister Radio, Law of Similars, Idyll Banter and Before You Know Kindness is also an strong supporter of reading groups. While visiting his web site we found that he will actually schedule a 30 minute conference by speakerphone with groups who are reading his books. We also discovered that he would be visiting Stowe to meet with groups interested in meeting with him in person. As we had just finished reading The Buffalo Soldier and between us had read all of the rest of his books we thought this would be the perfect ending to our last book discussion for the year and boy, was it. Besides being a brilliant man, (I can see him grimacing now) Mr. Bohjalian is as down to earth as the characters he writes about. We were able to ask questions while learning, among other things, about his passion for writing, how he researches his subjects and how he comes up with his ideas - something happens in his life and he thinks, what if . . . After answering our questions for over an hour he graciously autographed all of our books with a personal message. We urge you to read his books, visit his web site and if you are lucky enough, go see him in person. We can guarantee that you won't be disappointed.