The Library Card, by Jerry Spinelli: A PDF & EASEL DIGITAL Book Club Guide

Purchase this custom-made and ready-to-use, PDF book club packet and you will have the option of downloading it also as a TpT Digital activity. In this way you can assign it to students using Google Classroom which is handy for distance learning. If you want to learn more about using it as a digital product, you can download my free sample novel study and try it out.

The packet includes a 20-page student workbook and answer key to use with students in grades 5-8 who are reading the novel, The Library Card, by Jerry Spinelli. Essential reading, writing, and thinking skills are addressed in the activities. Skills include:

• summarizing
• visualizing
• determining author's purpose
• inference
• point-of-view
• comprehension
• explaining
• recognizing character traits
• figurative language (simile, metaphor, idiom, and personification)
• defining

The emphasis is on writing and comprehension: great for kids who need practice in these skills.

The guide divides the text into five reading assignments with vocabulary and writing activities to go with each one. The pages are designed for independent work so that students may be working on this in class or at home. Typically students are responsible for completing one reading assignment with the accompanying questions each week. They then meet once a week with teacher/aide/parent along with the other students reading the same book (a book club) to discuss the book and review the assignments.

The Library Card in a nutshell:

In this book by Newbery award-winning author, Jerry Spinelli, the reader is introduced to four main characters whose lives are deeply affected by the unexpected, and rather magical, appearance of a library card. While the book has a magical quality to it, the four stories are actually quite realistic. They are stories of down-and-outers, juvenile delinquents, and other lost souls whose lives desperately need a change of direction. It is a book of hope and the stories, ranging from humorous to heartbreaking, should be of high interest to students who may not be strong readers but are in need of a bit of hope in their lives (and who isn't?).

Appropriate for students in grades 5-9. Reading level is approximately 5th grade.