War of the Worlds book club

There’s a blog I follow talking about Media Myths, and how they keep popping up. A frequent one this time of year is the myth when Orsen Wells War of the Worlds was a radio drama it caused a panic as people truly believed the world was being invaded. Only, that didn’t happen. I have to admit this story isn’t all that relevant to our War of the Worlds book club, but it’s always the first thing that I think of when thinking about this book and a movie.

War of the Worlds book club and movie night, a great way to engage your reluctant reader

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War of the Worlds

This is an old book, written by the father of science fiction, H.G. Wells. Or maybe he’s the uncle of science fiction, and Jules Verne is the father…

Things to ponder.

War of the Worlds book club for high school

Another thing to ponder, why are the aliens described as octopods, but they’re always shown with 3 legs?

It’s a unique book for its time, it’s first-person, and follows the narrator as the world is invaded by aliens. It’s the very first alien invasion story and set up many of the tropes of the genre, including the isolated husband trying to get back to his family, the complete surprise as the aliens invade, and complete inadequacy of the government’s response.

Oh! Or Jules Verne could be the grandfather and H.G. Wells could be the father.

Sorry, I’ve got a migraine coming on, and so much to do, so I’m a bit more scattered than usual.

Our War of the Worlds book club

Superman chose to read War of the Worlds over the summer, leading us to not have our usual in-depth book club, instead, he talked to me all about what he noticed.

We talked about the similarities between the Martians in War of the World and the aliens in Signs. In both cases, the aliens at first seemed unstoppable until they are discovered to have a weakness. Both of them the weakness is kind of silly.

War of the Worlds book and a movie feature copy 9th high

But, if you’re wanting a more formal War of the Worlds book club, here are my suggestions:

But really, the big deal for us was the War of the Worlds book and a movie.

War of the Worlds snacks

So, here’s my caveat for you. The obvious movie to watch is the Tom Cruise War of the Worlds movie, but I watched that shortly after the kids were born, okay I lied, apparently it came out in 2010.

All I know is I watched it and couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night, and it super creeped me out, and so there was no way I was watching that movie. That was a rock-solid never going to happen.

Ha! I was right, it did come out in 2005! The 2010 version was when the blu-ray came out. So, I was super hormonal and sleep-deprived when I saw it, and so it was a strong no.

But, at the library was another War of the Worlds movie that also came out in 2005, ummm…… there’s a reason this isn’t a well-known version.

It had very little dialogue and in its attempt to be true to the book, it kind of…. well, it was boring, because in the book there is a lot of back and forth to places. So it showed the main character walking, running, or riding a bike to all sorts of different places. I think you could have cut a good 30-45 minutes out of the movie if you took out all the scenes of him going somewhere.

After a while we started fast-forwarding through that, but there was apparently voice-over during the parts we fast-forwarded through, and so we were just lost.

Even Superman who read the book. He did a lot of, “I think this is supposed to be this part of the book” statements.

It was truly terrible.

We did have fun laughing at it. That was a lot of fun.

War of the Worlds snacks for book club and movie night
  • Destroyed roads- I took some of the star crunch (this is a multi-pack with lots of different snacks) leftover from the Hunger Games book club a month or so earlier and broke them up
  • Humans- sour patch kids, really I think this was Superman’s attempt to get in his favorite at the time candy
  • Wrecked train cars- Swiss rolls
  • White fire- basically, Sprite and sherbert in individual cups, I really don’t remember why it was in individual cups, but it looked cool for the picture
  • war machines- these Superman really wanted to get 8 pretzels in there, but it was tricky. They’re double-stuffed oreos and pretzels
  • Red fungus- Superman attempted to explain why this was important, but I never really understood. It’s just a chocolate cake (because that’s what he wanted) and cream cheese frosting
  • Octopods- hot dogs cut into quarters to make legs kind of like octopus. I know the more traditional method is to put spaghetti in, but every time I’ve done that the kids have all hated it. Not that they really ate this version all that much better…..

More 9th grade learning fun

  • Hunger Game book and a movie 6th 9th speculative fiction feature
  • Raphael art project
  • work at your own pace with Mr. D self-paced math review curriculum high 9th
  • King Henry VIII wives lesson 9th history Renaissance
War of the Worlds book club
Isn’t this an amazing image I found?

“War of the Worlds” by jurvetson is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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