Fubbies 4 Ever

I love to walk, though for me, it’s a dangerous pastime. Not just because I’m clumsy and prone to trip, or because I forget to check the weather and, more times than I can count, have suddenly found myself strolling through a downpour or gale force winds. The big danger, the real danger, is that walking gives me ideas.

These are ideas I’d never get while sitting safely in my desk chair or on my couch. These ideas hatch in motion, beneath an open sky. These ideas scintillate!

I have to act on them quickly. Like, as soon as I get back home and kick off my muddy shoes, before I have time to think twice.

Thus was born The Fubby Club, AKA a book club for fourth graders at my grandbaby’s school.

Maybe not surprisingly, the grocery store didn’t have a Fubby cake, so for our last day party, I had to improvise. As you can see, it was a warm afternoon and my icing gel started to melt. All the more reason the club members had to eat it fast.

No sooner did I get back home than I emailed the school librarian. Who already has way more than enough on her plate—she really needs a turkey platter, not a plate— and who immediately signed on. One day we had maybe 3 kids signed up, the next 27. 27!!!! A few kids joined because their mothers made them, but most of them were readers. Real true readers.

(Note: this is an inner ring public school. The kids live in big houses, tiny apartments. They walk, they ride the bus, they arrive in giant SUVs. They get free lunch, they bring takeout sushi for lunch. They all love stories and cake.)

Our first book was Frindle, by Andrew Clement. Inspired by the kids in the book who re-christen pens frindles, they decided we’d call books fubbies. So cool to hear them debate whether, like the students in the book, they’d risk getting in trouble for a cause they believed in.

These fubby-lovers were so passionate, so tender! They took the stories so personally. When, in Magnolia Wu, by Chanel Miller, Magnolia’s mother suffers discrimination, one girl fiercely wished she could jump inside the book and set things right. My own Cody and the Rules of Life had them concluding that really, everything depends on who gets to make the rules (word!!!) When we read Ranger in Time, Rescue on the Oregon Trail, by Kate Messner, and I asked them what single thing they’d choose to bring on a journey like that, they almost all—even the boys, some tall as me—described their favorite stuffies.

In Save Me a Seat, by Sarah Weeks and Gita Varadarajan, there’s a teacher named Mrs. Beam. She tries her best and had my sympathies, but the kids weren’t having it. Mrs. Beam didn’t pay enough attention. She tried to solve kids’ problems without really understanding what the problems were. Worst of all, she was condescending.

Note well, all ye who work with ten year olds.

The club is over for now, but like all good ideas (thank you, my sturdy Hokas!) I’m still basking in its light. If anyone reading this would like to start a book/fubby club, please get in touch and I can tell you more.