It makes sense that children who are good readers will also be good writers, and that good writers will also be good readers. Research has confirmed that reading and writing influence each other as a child develops in both areas. That is, the more a child reads, the better his or her writing becomes, and vice versa. The Book Club program takes full advantage of this relationship, providing a framework within which reading and writing skills develop hand-in-hand, supporting and enriching one another. In recent years, reading logs have taken the place of traditional workbooks in many classrooms. These logs appear in a variety of forms, but their basic function is to provide a place where students can record their ideas, feelings, and questions about what they are reading. Teachers may provide a few open-ended questions to spark students' thinking or create pages that prompt students to apply skills such as comparing and contrasting, sequencing, predicting, or summarizing. But reading logs consist mostly of blank pages on which students can write, draw, or diagram their personal responses to the text. In Book Club, reading logs help children prepare for their small-group discussions. The thoughts and questions that each child records while reading provide a rich source of material for later discussion. After they have met and talked about the literature, children may write about how the discussion has affected their thinking. Thus, reading logs become a written history of students' evolving ideas as they read and discuss books. They are also a tangible symbol of the value placed on students' own reactions to literature and on what students can learn from talking to each other.