BOOMERANG GUIDES: CONNECTING WITH TEENS THROUGH BOOKS
Connecting with babies: you hold them, breathe them in, feed them, rock them to sleep. Connecting with kids: you snuggle, read them books, craft till glitter sticks to the walls. But connecting with teens? Oh boy.
Connecting with teens can be a bit tougher. I find with my teen and pre-teen, I’m constantly in a teeter of thinking, You don’t know that already?!? and Wait. You know THAT already!?!
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It’s a tricky stage in parenting. Suddenly, things feel more serious. The high school years feel like such a definate deadline: HAVE ALL THIS STUFF TAUGHT TO YOUR TEEN BY MAY 31, 2020!! (Or else!)
But when I talk myself off that cliff of doom and dread of forgetting some vital lesson I need to teach my kid, I can see the forest for the trees, so to speak.
I can’t stress about the giant list: Things Your Kid Should Know Before He Leaves Home.
TEACHING + CONNECTING WITH TEENS
I have to take teaching opportunities where I can. And with my kids, those opportunities look more like connecting over day-to-day things:
Oh, your Scout uniform needs to be washed for tonight’s meeting? Come here and I’ll remind you how to wash something on gentle cycle. Teaching opportunity turns into 10 minute conversation over measuring soap and turning uniforms inside-out.
You wanted to hang that shelf on your wall? Your dad’s good at anchoring things into the wall. Teaching opportunity turns into conversation about current guitar interest and how lessons are going over drills, anchors, and screws.
You get the idea. Things aren’t that much different than connecting with your younger kids. It just involves more grown-up stuff.
READING WITH TEENS, EVEN WHEN THEY DON’T LIKE IT
Reading books with my big kids has been amazing.
Why?
Because I can finally share with them the books I’ve read and loved as an adult!
Sometimes we’ll read the books on our own and then discuss together once a week or so. And sometimes I read aloud to my teen and pre-teen. That’s really special too.
To be totally transparent, my oldest has gone through a several-year stage of not being too interested in reading. But when we read together, it’s always more interesting for him. I’m not stressed about his current disinterest in reading because I know by now that stages are just that: stages that have a beginning and an end. His love for reading will return. I’ll wait for him to love picking up books on his own again.
But for now, we’ll read together–and I’ll keep introducing him to more authors and more genres. 
BOOMERANG GUIDES: CONNECTING WITH TEENS THROUGH BOOKS
My hands-down, favorite resource for choosing books, discussing books, and using books across the subjects in our homeschool are Brave Writer’s Boomerang Guides.
What I love about these guides:
- the weekly copywork selections
- the weekly grammar lessons
- literary elements lessons
- writing ideas based on the book’s writing style
- vocabulary words taken from the book
- ideas to do a book club party at the end of the book (in the newer Boomerang editions)
- the price!!
- WHAT I LOVE MOST: the Think-Piece questions that give me prompts for great conversations and connection with my teen
At the end of each Boomerang guide, you’ll find this amazing list of questions to discuss with your kids. These aren’t just cut and paste questions like, Who’s your favorite character?
No.
These are deep, gritty, make-you-think questions. These are questions that allow you to have some Big Juicy Conversations with your teens. Allow time for these discussions. We find they lead to lots of rabbit trails.
Our favorite is going out and discussing over teas or milkshakes.
OUR FAVORITE BOOKS FOR TEENS
There’s still so many books I want to read with my teens before they leave home–so many books, so little time, right!?! But I’m not going to stress about a list of books. I want to enjoy each page of each current book. Here’s some of our favorite titles and the Boomerang Guide that accompanies them:
- A Christmas Carol + Boomerang Guide // We’ve read this together for several Christmas seasons and the conversations around the great lessons in the book just keep getting better.
- The Hunger Games + Boomerang Guide // I know, kind of a morbid plot. BUT I inhaled these books years ago and it’s so much fun to discuss the premise if the story with my big kids. What would we do if there were a Hunger Games? What defenses would we have against the Capital? What survival skills do we have? We also loved watching all the movies together.
- Julie of the Wolves + Boomerang Guide// A great story of survival!
- Lord of the Flies + Boomerang Guide // Oh, such a great book for discussing! And my big kids are boys–just like the kids on the island. We talk about who could handle being the leader, what kinnbd of a qualities a leader needs, etc.
- Holes + Boomerang Guide// Wonderful story about being unfairly accused of something.
- Miss Peregrine’s School for Peculiar Children + Boomerang Guide // This was a weird book, but there’s lots to discuss. A whole school full of misfit children? Would that ever happen?? It’s a great one to compare to the movie as well.
More Favorite Books to Discuss with Teens
- Murder on the Orient Express + Boomerang Guide // Currently reading this to my boys and loving it. It’s a little hard to read with all the accents and French words, but I LOVE Agatha Christie’s mysteries and my boys are totally into it too! Can’t wait to watch the movie at the end of this one!
- Number the Stars + Boomerang Guide // This was my first ever historical fiction I read–in 5th grade!! I loved this book so much and loved reading it with my kids. There’s so many hard things to discuss as the character is pushed to do many difficult things.
- The Crossover + Boomerang Guide // Oh, such a heart-wrenching book!! It’s written all in prose and it’s a very quick read.
- The Giver + Boomerang Guide // Another dystopian story perfect for the pre-teen and teen years.
- The Hobbit + Boomerang Guide // Our current audiobook. Don’t tell my kids, but it’s not my favorite, but they love it! And they love that they can teach me what’s going on!! 🙂
- To Kill a Mockingbird + Boomerang Guide // One of my all-time favorite books ever and I loved sharing it with my oldest. He wasn’t as obsessed with it as I am, but that’s ok. We still had great discussion around this amazing book!
A FEW BOOKS ON OUR ‘TO BE READ’ LIST:
- And Then There Were None + Boomerang Guide // My first Agatha Christie book and I can’t wait to share this one with my kids. Personally, I think it miiiiight be my favorite over “Orient Express.”
- Animal Farm + Boomerang Guide // My oldest is really into politics and I think he’s going to love reading this book. It was a favorite of mine in high school lit class.
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn + Boomerang Guide // I added this to the list to read with my big kids a little selfishly–it’s always been on my own TBR list and I’ve always been a little resentful it was never on the required reading list for high school or college for me.
- Life of Pi + Boomerang Guide // We loved this movie and I think it’ll be a super interesting story to read with the kids.
- Station Eleven + Boomerang Guide // My kids love books in the fantasy and the post-apocalyptic genre.
- The Book Thief + Boomerang Guide // This is one of my other all-time favorite books! A WWII novel narrated by Death itself? It’s just a beautiful story and I can’t wait to read it with my older kids.
- The Chosen + Boomerang Guide // I hear great things about this book. It’s a must read on many lists.
- Diary of a Young Girl + Boomerang Guide // I recently heard one of my kids ask another one of my kids, “who is Anne Frank anyway??” After I picked myself up off the floor, I added this book to the list.
- The Princess Bride + Boomerang Guide // Added to the list by my husband who claims this is the best movie ever. We’ll see about that…and we’ll see how the book measures up to the “best movie ever.”
- The Westing Game + Boomerang Guide // A classic mystery!
Connecting with my teen and pre-teen through books has been a happy surprise at this stage in my parenting career.
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