Book 30: Are You There God, It's Me Margaret, by Judy Blume

Yes I am much too old to be reading this book, however, this was the replacement book for Matched for the Mother-daughter book club.  We thought it would be a more appropriate selection and since it had to deal with becoming a woman and first periods we thought it would a good choice.

I have to say, I am more comfortable with the Matched book over this one for the book club.  In this book there is more talk about sexuality and uncomfortable topics than in Matched.  Don't get me wrong, I think there is a place for "Are you There God..." and I think it is a book I would like my daughter to read, but I am not sure it is a book that she and her friends would like to discuss in a round table fashion with their moms. 

I also think that in my daughters case, 10 is a bit young to know about "Playboy" and going behind A&P with boys.  If those items were not involved, I would be more comfortable with the topics of anxiety of puberty, the noticing of boys and the struggle with the relationship with God.

As a young girl I remember loving Judy Blume books, and recommend them for my daughter.  I think we have decided to try "Blubber" as our actual first book club book.  (Fingers crossed that this club will get under way.)

Book 29: Matched by Ally Condie

My daughter who is 10 loves to read and she is a pretty advanced reader for her age.  And since I love to read I thought it would be nice to start a Mother-Daughter book club so we could share the love of books.  Initially I was only going to have it be the two of us, but I thought I could open it up to a few close friends.

I initially picked Matched as a our first book before I invited others to join in.  They had a concern on the book I selected.  the concern was how a love triangle would be dealt with and if our 10 year olds should be dealing with dating and that sort of thing.  I agreed and decided we would move on to another book.  However, I had already started the book and my daughter was still interested so I went ahead and finished it.  At this time my daughter has not finished so I can't speak to her views, I am hoping that will come later.

For me, considering this is a young adult novel, I enjoyed it very much.  First of all I found the love triangle to be handled very well and in a very PG manner.  Between the two love interests it is very clear that one is more romantic than the other.  I also liked that the courting of the characters presented itself in the act of learning to write cursive and the sharing of banned poetry.

Even with  the story being rooted in the "matching" of young adults, the dating and the relationship factor played in the background of this first novel of the trilogy.  More interesting was the "Society" and how Cassia starts to have her eyes opened to what is happening around her. 


I found this a good introduction to the Utopian genre.  Condie seems to have put some thought into her Society and it functions and how it progressed to get to its present state.  I am very interested in how my daughter will interpret how this society functions and what she thinks of their choices.  I do think there is a lot that could be discussed, and I am sort of sad that it got nixed as our first book.