The Fountain
Cut along the dashed lines and pass the cards around the table.
Before we talk about the book at all: when was the last time you tossed a coin into a fountain, and did you tell anyone what you wished for?
Where were you while you read most of this one (couch, bus, bath, bed), and did the book's mood match the room you were in?
This is a book about a place people keep returning to. What is your fountain, the spot you circle back to when you need something you cannot quite name?
Wishing in this book sits somewhere between hope and avoidance. Which of your own wishes have you kept private because saying them out loud felt too tender?
Scieszka is very good at small ordinary details. Which little moment in this book gave you that soft, recognized feeling of oh, I know exactly what that is like?
Who in this story did you most want to make a pot of soup for, and what would you have said to them while they ate?
Somewhere in these pages the book asks whether wanting something counts as a kind of faith. Reading it, did you come away feeling more generous toward your own unfinished hopes, or more impatient with them?
Without giving anything away about where it all lands: what did this book leave sitting in your chest the next morning, and was that a comfort or an ache (or both)?