For the parents

Buffalo Grove-based mom Lauren Koenig isn’t new to connecting with families in the community. As a jBaby Ambassador and PJ Library Connector, she has spent years engaging with Jews in a variety of ways. So, when she heard fellow moms express interest in book clubs, she decided to start her own through JUF last winter.

“It felt like a really good opportunity to take the people who had expressed interest and get them reading,” she said. “I was very interested in putting a Jewish on lens on it and exploring Jewish authors. “It’s really fun to have value-based conversations without feeling we’re having value-based conversations.”

Over the past several months, the group has read and discussed:

• The Matchmaker’s Gift by Lynda Cohen Loigman

• Once More with Feeling by Elissa Sussman

• Kissing Kosher by Jean Meltzer

• Crazy to Leave You by Marilyn Simon Rothstein

• Moms Who Read Romance Novels by Jenifer Goldin

• The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

While the group is open to parents of all genders, it has mainly attracted moms from across the North Shore.

“All of us have young kids, so we tend to prefer to not meet at our homes, so we rotate all over restaurants and coffee shops in the north and northwest suburbs,” she said. “I’ve made a lot of new connections and participants have made a lot of new connections. Obviously, book clubs are such a special place to talk about books, but they are also a great setting to talk about life.”

Koenig utilized JUF’s website to publicize the first several book clubs and has since shifted to word-of-mouth marketing. The book club has a WhatsApp group, where members conduct polls about the next books as well as meeting dates and locations.

“It’s helped a lot of moms get back into reading, which is hard to do with children,” Koenig said.

To learn more about the book club, email [email protected]. The group’s next read: Behind Every Good Man by Sara Goodman Confino.