Readateers Book Club

* Mission: To supplement classroom reading curriculum with weekly or monthly book club meetings and other projects.

Youth soccer teams had their designated meeting times and places. So did Little League baseball. Each day of the week, something ate away at the students’ reading time.

That is why the mothers of six Santa Monica elementary school students formed the Readateers Book Club two years ago.

“When it comes to discretionary time, kids run off to the movies or baseball practice, and reading is in second place, always,” said Jennifer Polhemus, 42, whose son, Harlow Sharp, participates in the book club. “We wanted reading to take first place.”

The book club supplements the children’s reading by introducing more challenging books and by tying in fun activities such as mock newscasts, plays and field trips.

One of their favorite projects involved sculpting a figure from the book “From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,” by E.L. Konigsburg.

“You have to use your imagination,” said Bruce Levoff, 10, a fifth-grader at Grant Elementary School. “It was fun.”

* Quote: “I wasn’t so jazzed about it in the beginning. I like reading but I don’t like reading with other people. But in the club, the projects are fun.”

--Harlow Sharp, 10, Santa Monica

Grant Elementary School fifth-grader