Book Club for Kids

Series produced by Kitty Felde

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The award-winning podcast where middle grade readers talk about books with host Kitty Felde.

The NEA says 7 in ten middle schoolers read more than ten books a year. By high school, that number drops to less than half. Wanna get your kids excited about reading? Book Club for Kids is a free, 20 minute podcast where middle grade readers talk about books with host Kitty Felde. The show includes a celebrity reader and a conversation with the author.

Book Club for Kids was originally inspired by conversations I had with young readers at the LA Times Festival of Books. I was there meeting and greeting fans of my old station KPCC where I hosted "Talk of the City" for nearly a decade. Parents would come up to our booth to say how much they liked the station and the talk show and their kids just looked bored. These were kids trapped in mom's carpool, forced to listen to public radio, desperate to hear young voices or conversations about things that interested them. What would they like to listen to?

The Book Club for Kids was born.

The show won the prestigious Literacy in Media Award. And I believe Book Club for Kids was the reason I was named Journalist of the Year three years out of four by the LA Press Club and the Society of Professional Journalists.

A live, on-stage version of Book Club for Kids became an annual tradition for half a decade at the LA Times Festival of Books. The show moved to cable TV in Los Angeles and now, Book Club for Kids has become a podcast.

So far, our celebrity readers include the FBI's special agent for weapons of mass destruction, an LA Laker, and Washington DC Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton. The show also features interviews with the authors - including this year's Newbery Award winner Kwame Alexander.

Already, the show has gotten some buzz: it made the front page of DC's local newspaper:

http://thesouthwester.com/2015/07/06/southwest-students-stars-of-new-book-club-for-kids-podcast/?

And there's an article about the show in this month's "Washington Parent" magazine:

http://www.washingtonparent.com/articles/1509/1509-mixed-media.php Hide full description

The NEA says 7 in ten middle schoolers read more than ten books a year. By high school, that number drops to less than half. Wanna get your kids excited about reading? Book Club for Kids is a free, 20 minute podcast where middle grade readers talk about books with host Kitty Felde. The show includes a celebrity reader and a conversation with the author.Book Club for Kids was originally inspired by conversations I had with young readers at the LA Times Festival of Books. I was there meeting and greeting fans of my old station KPCC where I hosted "Talk of the City" for nearly a decade. Parents would come up to our booth to say how much they liked the station and the talk show and their kids just looked bored. These were kids trapped in mom's carpool, forced to listen to public radio,... Show full description


28 Pieces

Order by: Newest First | Oldest First
Caption: Adam, Francisco, and Marcus at the Blackstone Library in Chicago
Kids from Chicago discuss a heartbreakingly beautiful book set in Maine: "Orbiting Jupiter" by Gary D. Schmidt. The writer shares the inspiration f...

  • Added: Jul 04, 2016
  • Length: 23:21
Caption: Francisco from Chicago
Kids from Illinois and California share their favorite titles. Kitty Felde is host.

  • Added: May 18, 2016
  • Length: 07:29
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Would you like to step into a painting? You can in Jacqueline West's book "The Shadows." It was the choice of the Girlfriends Book Club of Baltimor...

  • Added: May 10, 2016
  • Length: 17:35
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Kids from the Coal City Public Library share their favorite books with host Kitty Felde.

  • Added: May 03, 2016
  • Length: 05:43
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A trio of sisters fly from Brooklyn to Oakland in the late 1960's to get to know their estranged mother. She sends them to a rather unusual summer ...

  • Added: Apr 26, 2016
  • Length: 20:04
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We enter a world divided into two kinds of people: the silver ruling elite and the red underclass. It’s Victoria Aveyard’s RED QUEEN. And it was th...

  • Added: Apr 13, 2016
  • Length: 22:44
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This Bonus Episode comes to us from the Ottumwa Public Library in Iowa where the Middle School Book Club shares its favorite books.

  • Added: Apr 06, 2016
  • Length: 07:31
Caption: Sara, Mateo, and Max
Imagine a future where deadly tornadoes are a part of daily life. That's writer Kate Messner's world in "Eye of the Storm." 5th graders from Belved...

  • Added: Mar 28, 2016
  • Length: 20:10
Caption: Jack, Carolina, and Eleanor at Watchung Booksellers in Montclair, New Jersey
Americans have a romanticized image of English boarding schools. RIBBLESTROP is the opposite of that. Writer Andy Mulligan has created what must be...

  • Added: Mar 17, 2016
  • Length: 22:04
Caption: Markel, Jhandira, and Amelia
Sometimes, you just need a friend. Even if he’s imaginary, like the gigantic purple cat named Crenshaw. That’s the name of Newbery Award winning wr...

  • Added: Mar 10, 2016
  • Length: 21:36
Caption: Lina Nguyen, Kyra Johnson, and Ava Muniz are 6th graders at Sonora Elementary School in Costa Mesa
Writer Ronald L. Smith takes us on a trip down south, to the backwoods of Alabama, where a young boy was born with a heart-shaped birthmark, the ma...

  • Added: Mar 10, 2016
  • Length: 21:53
Caption: Nadia, Anna, Riya, and Nadia Trinidad from Sequoyah School in Pasadena, California
It was 1973 when the president of Chile was thrown out of office by a military coup. That’s the backdrop for the novel “I Lived on Butterfly Hill” ...

  • Added: Feb 23, 2016
  • Length: 22:22
Caption: Frances, Leah, Ilona, and Madi at Hurray For Books! bookstore in Alexandria
It was supposed to be the perfect year...until Lucy's Chinese great aunt arrived. Things went downhill from there. These readers from Alexandria, V...

  • Added: Feb 23, 2016
  • Length: 19:55
Caption: Fifth grade readers at St. Lucy Catholic School in Long Beach, California: : Grace, Giovanni, Vincent, Xavier, Alana, Zeus, Ethan, Eliyah, Samantha, and Zachary.
Melody loves words, but she can't speak or write or even walk across a room. Until a new computer opens up her life. Students from St. Lucy School ...

  • Added: Feb 23, 2016
  • Length: 19:48
Caption: Kaiden, Francisco, Kevin, Jefferson, and Nicholas are fifth graders at Thomson and Two Rivers Elementary Schools in Washington, DC.
These 5th graders love Tom Angleberger's "Origami Yoda" books so much, they formed a book club devoted to folding paper...and writing letters to th...

  • Added: Feb 23, 2016
  • Length: 20:46
Caption: Dainicia, Naomi, and Nya are 7th graders at Benjamin D. Foulois Creative and Performing Arts Academy in Maryland.
Imagine Katrina was just the first of a series of ever-more devastating hurricanes. New Orleans has been walled off because of a deadly disease. Th...

  • Added: Feb 23, 2016
  • Length: 21:10
Caption: Lila Trujillo and Julia Cooper join writer Meg Medina to discuss her book.
Book Club for Kids goes to Hooray For Books! bookstore in Alexandria, Virginia to talk about Meg Medina's novel about bullying and mother-daughter ...

  • Added: Feb 23, 2016
  • Length: 22:33
Caption: The Mother Daughter Book Club at One More Page bookstore discusses "A Mango Shaped Space" by Wendy Mass
Do you see colors when you do math problems? The heroine of "A Mango Shaped Space" does. Kids from the Mother/Daughter Book Club at One More Page b...

  • Added: Feb 23, 2016
  • Length: 19:28
Caption: Kendall, Vibha, and Gareth with author Winifred Conkling
The largest attempted slave escape on U.S. soil happened in SouthWest Washington, DC. That's the tale in "Passenger on the Pearl." Young readers d...

  • Added: Feb 17, 2016
  • Length: 39:45
Caption: Amandla,  Imani, Angela, and Eunhea, readers from Robert Goddard Montessori School, Grace Christian School, Fairhaven School, and St. Anne's School – all in Maryland.
What role did African-Americans play in the Revolutionary War? "Chains" - the first in a trilogy by Laurie Hulse Anderson - takes us to Manhattan i...

  • Added: Feb 16, 2016
  • Length: 21:04