If you are thinking of starting a parent-child book club, I recommend taking a look at these materials:

 - The revised edition of Shireen Dodson’s “The Mother-Daughter Book Club: How Ten Busy Mothers and Daughters Came Together to Talk, Laugh, and Learn Through Their Love of Reading” (HarperCollins, 2007).

Dodson, author of “Great Books for Girls,” gives tips on forming a mother-daughter book club, along with reading lists and discussion guides.

 - Cindy Hudson’s “Book by Book: The Complete Guide to Creating Mother-Daughter Book Clubs” (Seal Press, 2009).

Hudson shares her wisdom on running a successful mother-daughter book club, including topic suggestions, club guidelines, and how to keep a club going as daughters grow older.

 - MotherDaughterBookClub[dot]com, also by Cindy Hudson. This site provides sure-to-please reading lists for four age groups, including lists of historical fiction. Also check out Hudson’s informative mother-daughter book club blog at WordPress.

 - The revised edition of Kathleen Odean’s Great Books for Girls (Ballantine Books, 2002).

The titles in this guide are populated with strong, courageous female characters.

According to Odean, she sought out characters with attributes “too seldom associated with girls, such as bravery, athleticism, and independence. These girls take risks and treat setbacks as ways to learn.”

Be sure you have the revised edition of the guide -- it has 294 books not found in the first edition. The new titles replace dated and out-of-print books, along with books whose topics are better covered in more recent publications.

For reads your son might enjoy discussing, visit GuysRead[dot]com, created by children’s author Jon Scieszka.

Intended to inspire boys to become life-long readers, this site lists promising books in ingenious categories such as “Boxers, Wrestlers, Ultimate Fighters,” “Outer Space, but with Aliens,” and “How to Build Stuff.”

More extensive book recommendations can be found in Kathleen Odean’s “Great Books for Boys” (Ballantine Books, 1998).

Arranged by age level, the book suggestions will get boys reading and keep them reading.

“Great Books for Boys” has a different sociological agenda than “Great Books for Girls” and features strong protagonists of both sexes. Odean’s stated goal is to provide boys with literature that reflects the widest possible range of emotions and experiences.

(Unfortunately, Odean hasn’t published an updated edition of this guide, but it’s still worth checking out.)

You might also want to read through Chapter 4 of Rita Soltan’s “Reading Raps: A Book Club Guide for Librarians, Kids, and Families” (Libraries Unlimited, 2005).

Dedicated to father-son book clubs, this chapter explores why boys are often unenthusiastic about recreational reading and discusses book features that attract male readers.

Readers, share your parent-child book club resources with the BCC community by using the “comment” feature.