Fairy Tale Characters Breathe New Life: A Fantasy Book Club Approach for Tweens by Rita Soltan is an article that seeks to make the case for using fantasy literature, including classic fairy tales, to communicate moral principles or "life's deepest truths". Soltan presents several classic fairy tales as well as revised fairy tale stories that parallel the original to offer a large quantity of content to be accessed during book club discussions. I find myself agreeing with the premise of what Soltan is wanting to accomplish with the book club. Too few people view morality as a "truth" which is something to be adhered to. Soltan continues by laying out a schedule for the book club including spoken readings, literary analysis and comparisons, etc. I like the plan that she has laid out, but I find that it is much easier to have this ambitious plan than it is to actually implement it. Brannon talks about the difficulty of holding the attention span of both teens and tweens (p92), which means that Soltan's idyllic progression of book club meetings and discussion might be a difficult task indeed. A librarian who truly connects with youth will have success with such a program. If, however, more popular tween novels are used as an example of moral compasses then there may be ore original buy in from the youth.
Briannon, S. (2009). Dozens of Teens/Tweens in the Library at One Time? Why Not?. Texas Library Journal, 85(3), 92-93.
Soltan, R. (2007). Fairy Tale Characters Breathe New Life: A Fantasy Book Club Approach for Tweens. Children & Libraries, 5(2), 34-39.
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