February Grades 5-6 Book Club: The Illuminated Adventures of Flora & Ulysses

For February's Book Club, we read Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures by Kate DiCamillo. Here's a bit of what we discussed, based on Candlewick Press discussion topics.



What’s in a name? This book includes funny names, literary names, rhyming names, and superhero names. Which character do you think has the most fun-sounding name? What, if anything, can a name tell us about a character? 


The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto! is Flora’s favorite comic book. It includes special bonus comics at the back of each issue including Terrible Things Can Happen to You! and The Criminal Element Is Among Us. Throughout the story, Flora refers to many of the life skills and themes that appear in her comics. One lesson is CPR. One theme is that “impossible things happened all the time” (page 21). What other things does Flora learn from her comics? Name some of your favorite sayings or lessons from her comic books. 



Let’s talk about superheroes. What makes Ulysses a superhero? Are there special requirements for being a superhero? Are there special things that all superheroes seem to have? 


Flora describes herself as “a natural-born cynic” (page 6). What do you think that means? Dr. Meescham says that “Cynics are people who are afraid to believe” (page 129). Do you agree with her description? What things does Flora do that show she is a cynic? What things show that Flora is not a cynic?  


The graphic-novel interludes show Ulysses flying at the Giant Do-Nut (pages 103–104), his vanquishing of Mr. Klaus the cat (pages 132–133), his cheering up Flora and proving his superpowers (page 153), and his escape from Flora’s mother (pages 202–203). Does Ulysses believe he can fly when he first tries to? What details about his flying are captured in the pictures?  


How does Dr. Meescham support Flora, Ulysses, and Mr. Buckman? What do Dr. Meescham’s stories tell you about her? 


What is the funniest scene in the book for you? Describe it. 


On page 135, we hear the promise “I will always turn back toward you.” It is repeated many times throughout the story. What do you think it means?  


Describe the relationship between Flora and William Spiver. In what ways are they the same? In what ways are they different? 


Flora and Ulysses are both lost and trying to find home. Where do they end up? How does each one figure out how to get home? 


On page 216, a miracle is said to occur and William Spiver is able to see again. What do you think happens? 



Imagine this story told only as a comic book. How do you think it would be different? 



There are many quirky characters in the story. Whom do you like best and why? 


Throughout the story, Flora and her mother are at odds. How does this change in the end? What do we learn about Flora’s mother that we didn’t know? 


What would you like to see happen next for Ulysses and Flora?

We will be reading The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich. 

"Omakayas, a seven-year-old Native American girl of the Ojibwa tribe, lives through the joys of summer and the perils of winter on an island in Lake Superior in 1847." -summary We will be meeting on Wednesday, March 8 in order to discuss this book. Please pick up your copy and be sure to register at the Circulation Desk.

March Grades 5-6 Book Suggestions

The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich

Nineteenth-century American pioneer life was introduced to thousands of young readers by Laura Ingalls Wilder's beloved Little House books. With The Birchbark House, award-winning author Louise Erdrich's first novel for young readers, this same slice of history is seen through the eyes of the spirited, 7-year-old Ojibwa girl Omakayas, or Little Frog, so named because her first step was a hop. The sole survivor of a smallpox epidemic on Spirit Island, Omakayas, then only a baby girl, was rescued by a fearless woman named Tallow and welcomed into an Ojibwa family on Lake Superior's Madeline Island, the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker. We follow Omakayas and her adopted family through a cycle of four seasons in 1847, including the winter, when a historically documented outbreak of smallpox overtook the island.

Hour of the Bees by Lindsay Eagar

Magic blends with reality in a stunning coming-of-age novel about a girl, a grandfather, wanderlust, and reclaiming your roots. Things are only impossible if you stop to think about them. . . . While her friends are spending their summers having pool parties and sleepovers, twelve-year-old Carolina -- Carol -- is spending hers in the middle of the New Mexico desert, helping her parents move the grandfather she's never met into a home for people with dementia. At first, Carol avoids prickly Grandpa Serge. But as the summer wears on and the heat bears down, Carol finds herself drawn to him, fascinated by the crazy stories he tells her about a healing tree, a green-glass lake, and the bees that will bring back the rain and end a hundred years of drought. As the thin line between magic and reality starts to blur, Carol must decide for herself what is possible -- and what it means to be true to her roots. 

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park

A Long Walk to Water begins as two stories, told in alternating sections, about two eleven-year-olds in Sudan, a girl in 2008 and a boy in 1985. The girl, Nya, is fetching water from a pond that is two hours' walk from her home: she makes two trips to the pond every day. The boy, Salva, becomes one of the "lost boys" of Sudan, refugees who cover the African continent on foot as they search for their families and for a safe place to stay. Enduring every hardship from loneliness to attack by armed rebels to contact with killer lions and crocodiles, Salva is a survivor, and his story goes on to intersect with Nya's in an astonishing and moving way.