News

For the Love of Lit

Meritt Sawyer and friends revive the value of family and the printed page.

Back in 2001, in a fourth-grade schoolroom in the San Francisco Bay area, a band of 12 mothers had an idea: What if we read books together with our daughters? Bibliophile Meritt Sawyer, whose gift for leadership was bearing fruit on the boards of John Stott Ministries and Fuller Theological Seminary, watched her initiative take off. “We knew the girls would be going through stages where hanging out with Mom was not the favorite thing to do,” she says. The girls are now beginning their sophomore years in high school, yet still convene for meals and spirited conversation. “This continues to be a vehicle to bring us together,” says Sawyer.

Central to the purpose of the mother-daughter book club, now in its seventh year, is to instill in the girls a love of literature. As Meritt’s daughter, Clary, observes, “Most of the time people my age—members of the club included—are doing sports or musicals. They usually don’t think that reading can be an extracurricular activity.” The group’s reading list has spanned everything from classics such as The Odyssey and The Count of Monte Cristo to contemporary fiction such as Josh Grogan’s Marley & Me, Sue Monk Kidd’s Secret Life of Bees, and Lisa See’s Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, among others worthy of an Oprah endorsement.

Sawyer’s book club insists on gathering for meals beforehand, ensuring plenty of face-to-face time with family and peers while they introduce their daughters to current social and ethical questions. For example, upon reading two books about girls coming of age during China’s Cultural Revolution, Chinese Cinderella and Red Scarf Girl, the group talked about the revolution’s disastrous effect on families. “That was a profound discussion for them,” says Sawyer, as they began to appreciate perhaps for the first time their political freedoms. Jeanette Walls’s harrowing memoir, The Glass Castle, prompted a discussion on dysfunctional families, and the modern classic about Irish-Catholic immigrants in 1920s New York, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, on poverty and adolescent angst.

Some topics are difficult to broach, but the girls have learned to engage issues analytically, if not definitively. “Sometimes the benefit [of the conversations] is in the process of discussion, not necessarily coming to an immediate conclusion,” says Sawyer.

There are a few other professing Christians in the book club, but religion is not the point. Sawyer is instead intent on fostering relationships: “I don’t want to hang out only with Christians … I don’t think that’s what Christ called us to do. So what I can be is myself—be who I am in Christ in the world.” But she also wants to reclaim a crucial human activity, one Sawyer fears her daughter’s Facebook-friendly generation may be losing. “There’s still a value in the printed page, still a value in friendship where you see each other face to face. And there’s still a value of getting together and dialoguing on contemporary issues.”

Her mission for literature seems to have worked, at least for one of the group’s members. “My daughter has said that if it weren’t for this book club, she does not believe she would have read anything outside of what was assigned in a classroom, and yet today she is a voracious reader. In fact, she’s upstairs reading right now.”

Katelyn Beaty is a CT assistant editor.

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

This article is the fourth of five profiles in Christianity Today‘s cover package on “The New Culture Makers.”

Christianity Today also wrote about the artist Makoto Fujimura, angel investors, and the Prison Entrepreneurship Program.

Crouch spoke with CT about culture making on a local scale.

Also in this issue

The CT archives are a rich treasure of biblical wisdom and insight from our past. Some things we would say differently today, and some stances we've changed. But overall, we're amazed at how relevant so much of this content is. We trust that you'll find it a helpful resource.

Cover Story

Creating Culture

Hope for Troubled Times

When a Professor of Aramaic Meets Hollywood

The Ironic Faith of Emergents

McLaren Emerging

My Top 5 Books on Food

Bookmarks

On the Grand Canyon Bus

News

It's Primetime in Iran

News

Looking for Home

Review

Girls on Display

Missionary Myths

Theology in Aisle 7

News

The Father of Faith-Based Diplomacy

Should I Fish or Lay Low?

News

Richard Foster on Leadership

A Life Formed in the Spirit

Review

Debauchery and Crucifixes

News

Quotation Marks

News

Prayer at the Pump

News

Go Figure

News

Going to Bat for His Neighbors

Choosing Celibacy

Wire Story

Sunday Drivers

News

The Other Kind of Angels

News

No More Shortcuts

News

Re-Imagining Reality

Crouch and Culture

Cultivating Where We're Planted

News

Caesar's Sectarians

News

Healing ORU

Missional Misstep

News

'Dead Sea Scrolls on Stone'

News

Translation Tiff

News

Leaving Lakeland

News

Undue Attention in Algeria

News

The Party of Faith

News

Salvation through Buddhism?

View issue

Our Latest

Public Theology Project

Russell Moore’s Favorite Books of 2024

The top 10 picks of CT’s editor in chief range from dystopian fiction to philosophy, with a dose of Sabbath poems, Inklings, and country music.

My Book Sales Stink. But I’m Glad I Took the Publishing Plunge.

Even though the experience bruised my ego, God redeemed it in surprising ways.

Latino Christians Deserve a Straight Answer on Immigration

The Russell Moore Show

A Conversation with Peggy Noonan

The Pulitzer Prize winner ponders who we are and what we may become.

A Better Trans Conversation

As the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on youth gender medicine, Christians must prepare to speak with love while holding fast to biblical truth.

Ethics Aren’t Graded on a Curve

President Joe Biden’s pardon of Hunter Biden was wrong, and no amount of bad behavior from Donald Trump changes that fact.

News

UK Christians Lament Landmark Vote to Legalize Assisted Dying 

Pro-life faith leaders say Parliament’s proposed bill fails to protect the vulnerable and fear it will “create more suffering and chaos.”

Strike Up the Band: Sixpence None the Richer Goes Back on Tour

With its perennial hit “Kiss Me” still in our ears and on our playlists, the Christian band reunites with nothing to prove.

Apple PodcastsDown ArrowDown ArrowDown Arrowarrow_left_altLeft ArrowLeft ArrowRight ArrowRight ArrowRight Arrowarrow_up_altUp ArrowUp ArrowAvailable at Amazoncaret-downCloseCloseEmailEmailExpandExpandExternalExternalFacebookfacebook-squareGiftGiftGooglegoogleGoogle KeephamburgerInstagraminstagram-squareLinkLinklinkedin-squareListenListenListenChristianity TodayCT Creative Studio Logologo_orgMegaphoneMenuMenupausePinterestPlayPlayPocketPodcastRSSRSSSaveSaveSaveSearchSearchsearchSpotifyStitcherTelegramTable of ContentsTable of Contentstwitter-squareWhatsAppXYouTubeYouTube