In this blog post I’m sharing details about our inaugural book club pick, Summer of the Monkeys, including details about the story, how my family used the Summer of the Monkeys Book Club Guide, and book club activity photos from Treehouse Book Club members.

Summer of the Monkeys is an amazing choice for children who love heart-filled adventure stories that will have you full of emotion, and maybe a few tears, by the end of the story.

We loved reading Summer of the Monkeys as a part of Treehouse Book Club. In my family, we have always loved reading great books, reading aloud, and hosting book clubs. Adding Treehouse Book Club to our days has been a lovely way for us to anchor our days with literature and learning.

In this blog post:

Summer of the Monkeys summary
Themes in Summer of the Monkeys
Summer of the Monkeys book study ideas and activities
How we use Treehouse Book Club in our homeschool
Treehouse Book Club community photos

Summer of the Monkeys summary

Summer of the Monkeys by Wilson Rawls – author of the classic story Where the Red Fern Grows – is an adventure story filled with heart, humor, and excitement.

The story features 14-year-old Jay Berry Lee, who is walking through the Ozark Mountains of Oklahoma in search of a lost cow when he encounters a tree full of monkeys. When Jay learns from his grandpa that the monkeys have escaped from a traveling circus, and there’s a big reward for the person who finds and returns them, he is thrust into an adventure as he is determined to catch the monkeys and earn the reward for himself.

By the end of the summer, Jay learned a lot more than he bargained for, and not just about monkeys.

The Summer of the Monkeys Book Club Guide is available now. This is a perfect choice if your children love adventure stories and is loved by both older and younger children.

Learn more and see a sample Treehouse Book Club lesson plan here.

Themes in Summer of the Monkeys

My children and I learned so much as we studied this story with our family and our book club community. Summer of the Monkeys includes these themes:

Cherokees
Trail of Tears
Transportation in the 1800s
Samuel Morse and the Telegraph
Chimpanzees and Monkeys vs. Apes
Ozark Mountains
Sycamore trees
The American Red Cross and Clara Barton
Circus history
Horses and ponies
Fairy rings
Compassion and empathy
Perseverance

Summer of the Monkeys book study ideas and activities

Here are some of the activities we loved from the Summer of the Monkeys Book Club Guide.

The main premise of the book is catching monkeys! One afternoon we took on the challenge to make our own monkey traps, which was a great STEM challenge. The kids used household items to make traps and then presented them to the other kids.

Throughout the story, we enjoyed learning about the differences between apes and monkeys. We watched a lot of videos and read books about the differences. The older children created notebook pages with the differences.

Jay Berry’s grandma made him a huckleberry pie to help him grow muscles, so we made our own version – a combination of raspberry and blueberry.

My son loved researching and learning about the author, Wilson Rawls. He was inspired by the struggles he went through as a writer and how he overcame them. One night, he gave a mini-presentation about the author at the dinner table and I was pleased to observe how many details he retained and the excitement he shared as he spoke.

In the story, one of the main characters dresses up like a Civil War nurse and “doctors” her brother and dog. We used this to study Clara Barton. My girls made nurse uniforms and put felt red crosses on bags to hold their “medicine” and on their sheet forts, pretending to be nurses in the war. My older daughter notebooked about her after reading some picture books about her life and work.

My little ones also got to participate. They colored pictures that coordinated with the story, and they made big paper monkeys to hang from our school room ceiling

My kids had fun making lapbooks while I read aloud, which was something new to us. They are interactive book reports with a lot of cutting, coloring, and gluing. The older kids filled out sections of them and the younger kids just cut and assembled. It was a great activity for them to do as I was reading and will make a fun presentation. I got this idea from our wonderful nanny, Miss Heidi, who was homeschooled and created a lot of lapbooks growing up. She created a novel-study lapbook template that can be used for any book. (She is going to make add-ons for all of the books we read aloud through Treehouse Book Club this year.) Read more about creating lapbooks here.

We gained so much insight and knowledge as we worked our way through this story!

How we use Treehouse Book Club in our homeschool

We originally read Summer of the Monkeys as a part of Treehouse Book Club. Treehouse Book Club is a monthly book club membership designed for families with children ages 6-12. I designed Treehouse Book Club as a way to dive deep into living literature in your homeschool connecting themes to science, nature, geography, history, and language arts. The book club guides include a reading schedule, activity ideas, discussion questions, writing prompts, and more, and are designed to join with an online or in-person community.

In my family, we read the Treehouse Book Club selection together over lunch and use this as a jumping off point to explore literature together, along with themes in history and science.

I love that we can use the reading plan and Book Club Guide from Treehouse Book Club as a way to blend literature with other subjects my children are studying. I created it to be an organic way to read high-quality literature and explore new topics like geography, historical figures, vocabulary, and more in an organic way.

After finishing the book, we meet with a group of friends who have also read the book to celebrate finishing the novel, give presentations, eat snacks related to the story, and more. I love that we have a template to engage and share in learning with our friends and family. We benefit so much from collaborating and learning with one another!