Right now, I am reading the fourth book in the Mother Daughter Book Club series, by Heather Vogel Frederick. The whole series is about four (kind of five) best friends growing up in Concord, Massachusetts. Each book covers a year of their lives and in this book they are going through their first year of high school. The girls are Emma Hawthorne, Jess Delaney, Cassidy Sloane, and Megan Wong. Aside from Jess and Emma, they are all incredibly different girls, but were brought together when their mothers decided to make a book club a couple of years ago. They hated this at first, but know they are all best friends, and they enjoy getting to just hang out when they meet for the book club. The kind of fifth main character is Becca Chadwick who joined the book club last year. At first they hated her, but she has pretty much joined the group by now. One of the most important events in the book club this year occurred when Emma and her mother, father, and brother Darcy moved to England. They moved into the house of Simon, Tristan, and their parents, while Simon and Tristan’s family moved to Concord. It was a year long house swap. There are many interesting and important relationships in all of the books; in this one some of the most important relationships are between Ms. Bergson and various book club members. She is a retired Olympic figure skater who now lives and teaches skating in Concord. Recently, she joined the book club and has been a great part of it.
Cassidy loves to play sports, and her favorite thing in the world to do is play hockey, (which she is amazing at playing.) Ms. Bergson is a retired Olympic skater and teaches at the rink. Clearly they spend a lot of time together, skating or working on various projects. This year, Cassidy really wanted to start a club for young girls that like to play hockey. She has always had to play with boys teams, and wants there to be more opportunities for girls who either love hockey already, or want to learn. Ms. Bergson negotiated with the rink owner and got Cassidy time at the rink, giving Cassidy the opportunity to make this club. This really means a lot to Cassidy, and through this Cassidy realizes that she really loves teaching and coaching these young girls. Ms. Bergson is sort of like a grandmother to Cassidy. Cassidy’s mother is an incredibly famous supermodel, and loves all types of girly things. Cassidy and her mom have a great relationship, though they do not really enjoy the same things. Cassidy really connects with Ms. Bergson through there shared love of skating, and now coaching skating as well.
About a year ago, Megan’s grandmother Gigi moved to live with Megan from Hong Kong. Gigi’s great, and she and Megan both relate to each other in their huge love of fashion, but Gigi kind of needed a friend her own age. When Gigi and Ms. Bergson met, they instantly became friends, and were together as the two older members of the book club. Gigi can’t skate, but the two of them love to go into Boston together, and they hang out all the time. Ms. Bergson has always been kind of lonely, and Gigi had just moved all the way from Hong Kong, she did not know anyone. They met each other at a time when both really needed a friend and have had a great friendship ever since.
Emma, Jess and almost everyone else has a special and unique relationship with Ms. Bergson as well, but the others were the ones I chose to write about. In conclusion, Ms. Bergson seemed like a really delightful character, but unfortunately, she died at the end of the book.
Alex, I think that it is really great how you explain the main characters. I like how you also speak about the main characters' relationships with eachother and other people. Is there any badness or bitterness in any of these relationships? What do you think of the main characters and their relationships?
ReplyDeleteThanks Noa, there are definitely some negative relationships in this book. For example, two of the main characters Jess and Becca have a pretty bad relationship sometimes. This is because Becca used to be really mean to Jess for most of her time in middle school. All of the relationships I wrote about are pretty positive, but there are bad ones that need to be fixed as well.
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