Book Club Guide for Greenglass House

Marta-Kate

Dec 10, 20243 min read

GreenGlass House

By Kate Milford

For Ages 8-12

Genre: Mystery

Milo plans to spend his winter vacation relaxing until secretive guests fill the inn run by his parents and objects mysteriously disappear. Use these discussion questions, snacks, and activities during your next book club to bring this mystery to life. Greenglass House is great for tween and homeschool book clubs or to recommend to mystery lovers.

Discussion Questions

In addition to the general book club questions for fiction books found here, below are my favorite questions to get groups talking about Greenglass House.

Who was your favorite guest and why?
Name the guests in order of appearance: De Cary Vinge (p. 8) Georgiana “Georgie” Moselle (p. 14) Mrs. Eglantine Hereward & Dr. Wilbur Gowervine (p. 19) Clemence O. Cander (p. 22)
Milo says he has “camped out in every room at some point or another” and “the inn made noises: floorboards creaked, old windowpanes rattled, hinges groaned…” Would you like to live in such a house and be comfortable sleeping in different rooms?
There were a few stories told within this story. Do you remember what they were and who told them?
What were all the ways the Roamer was able to make wishes in the Roamer and the Specter story?
What did you think of the game Odd Trails? Would you like to play it?
Did you know something was off about Meddy before her secret was revealed? What gave it away?
This book won a lot of awards: National Book Award Nominee, Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery, Nebula/Andre Norton Award Nominee – Do you think it was that good? Can you think of a better mystery book?

Snacks

Hot chocolate with whip cream & marshmallows (p. 42)

Lizzie Caraway’s famous red velvet cake (p. 104)

ACTIVITIES

What's the significance?

This makes a great icebreaker! Give each participant one of the illustrations from the beginning of each chapter. Challenge them to share the significance of that illustration to the story and/or what happened in the chapter that illustration/item was introduced. The images can be found here.

For icebreakers that can be used with any book, check out The Youth Desk's Book Clubs page.

Map the Library

Create a basic map of your library. Instead of labeling each room with its actual name, label the rooms with fun names like you'd find in Greenglass House, such as Emporium (aka study room), Great Room (aka Children's Area), etc. Challenge attendees to walk around the library using the map and find 3 items from the book. Ask them to mark on the map where they find each of the items. They have 10 minutes to complete the challenge and must return to tell you in which room they found each of the items!

Items may include a pocket watch, a notebook with the name "Georgie" written on the cover, and a sled. Simply printing images of these items and taping them around the library is a great alternative to using actual items!