Middle Grade at Heart’s October book club pick was the touching and magical THE THREE RULES OF EVERYDAY MAGIC by our contributor and co-founder Amanda Rawson Hill.
Believe. Give. Trust. Kate doesn’t really believe in magic. She hasn’t had much reason too since her dad left and her best friend started to drift away. But when Grammy moves in with Kate and her mom and starts telling Kate about the three rules of Everyday Magic, Kate’s willing to try anything to put things back to right.
“There’s a part of me that wants to believe in magic, especially if it has anything to do with Dad.”
Grammy and Kate share many moments together baking cookies, sharing memories of Kate’s dad, knitting, and, of course, talking about the three rules of Everyday Magic. Even as Grammy’s mental clarity fades, she shares so much with Kate about life, love, and magic in a series of bittersweet scenes:
“If you love someone you can always give them magic. And you always should. We never give up on people we love. I know better than most.”
But sometimes the magic doesn’t work exactly the way you’d planned. Sometimes it can’t stop relationships from shifting, diseases from changing the people we love, or bad things from happening. That’s when the third rule comes in and it’s the most important of all:
“You have to trust the magic. That means you can’t give it away expecting a certain outcome. You can’t put demands on it and say it only worked if everything goes how you wanted it to, or when you wanted it to. Magic has its own timeframe and its own ideas about what should happen. You can hope it will cause some event, but sometimes it will do something else entirely. That doesn’t mean it didn’t work.”
Kate’s world is forever changed by the events in THE THREE RULES OF EVERYDAY MAGIC. And even though the magic she discovers isn’t able to put everything back the way it used to be, it does help her navigate her changing world with a little more grace and love.
That’s the beauty of this bittersweet, touching story, one that will support young readers who are struggling with the same issues Kate faces and give others a safe space to process their own complicated emotions.
To learn more about Amanda, or for printable drawing pages, activities, recipes, and discussion questions, check out our Middle Grade at Heart newsletter devoted to THE THREE RULES OF EVERYDAY MAGIC here (https://mailchi.mp/b46a53e64e30/october-book-club-the-three-rules-of-everyday-magic-by-amanda-rawson-hill-a-giveaway).
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The Middle Grade @ Heart book club pick for November is THE HOTEL BETWEEN by Sean Easley! Stay tuned for more posts about this awesome book and don’t forget to join us for our Twitter chat on THREE RULES OF EVERDAY MAGIC on November 6!
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