Three Cups of Tea

Can you imagine being stranded high in the mountains, with friends and family far away?  Mountain climber Greg Mortenson spent a winter in a remote village in Pakistan, dependent on the care and generosity of a small band of villagers who have lived the same simple lifestyle for generations.  Greg is astounded by the village children's idea of school - squatting in the cold, drawing and writing in the dirt with a stick for a pencil, and taught occasionally by an itinerant teacher.  He vows to return to Pakistan and build a school, a vow which seems impossible to keep when his first appeals for help in the United States are answered by only one contribution. 

If you would like to participate in an MVM book group to read the fascinating story of Greg's determination to keep his promise, join our Three Cups of Tea bookgroup.  We will meet early some evening in January to kick off the book group, use this blog to communicate our thoughts about the book, and reconvene at the end of our reading.  We'll celebrate with tea, of course.  Email Nancy Kane at nancy.kane@bhrsd.org or call me at school if you would like to participate.

Rules

Catherine is very tired of trying to explain everything in the world to her younger brother David, who is autistic.  She's even more tired of having to explain David to everyone she meets.  When a new family moves in next door, with a girl her age, Catherine thinks she may have found the friend she's been looking for.  Davdi's needs dominate family life.  Catherine has no interest in going to therapy visits with David until she develops a friendship with a boy in a wheelchair who uses a keyboard to communicate. 

Weedflower

Sumiko and her younger brother, Tak Tak, are Japanese-American children who live with their aunt, uncle and two cousins on a flower farm in California. When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, all Japanese-Americans are rounded up and sent to internment camps because the U. S. government fears that some among them might be spies with loyalties to Japan. Sumiko and her family find themselves living with thousands of others, in crude quarters in the blistering hot desert of Arizona in a camp which borders a reservation for Native Americans. As the days turn into weeks and months, Sumiko's dream of one day owning her own flower shop seems to be crumbling into the dusty dirt beneath her feet.