Girls' Night Out Gets Smart.

IT COULD BE A BOOK GROUP LIKE ANY other. Fourteen friends and neighbors are gathered in Janet Boltax's Montclair, N.J., living room, discussing a novel. Conversation, frequently punctuated by laughter, flows as freely as the tea and pink lemonade. What makes this group different is its composition: women and their eighth-grade daughters who--brace yourself--actually seem to enjoy their mothers' company. "It's cool to hear her perspective on things," says Emily Claman, a 13-year-old whose oversize hoop earrings match her mom's.

Yes, she said cool. And, no, these are not aberrant adolescents who missed the memo on how teenage girls are supposed to act. Scenes like this one--call it Oprah's Book Club meets Mommy and Me--are playing out in living rooms and at public libraries across the country. "We hear more and more about them. They've become so popular," observes Carol Brey-Casiano, president of the American Library Association in Chicago. There are as many mother-daughter pairs on a wait list to join the club at the Central Library in Cheyenne, Wyo., as participants in the group. Even American Girl Place in New York City is getting in on the act; the pre-tween shopping attraction recently launched a book club where moms and their daughters can talk about a designated American Girl title over tea, with the help of a moderator from the New York Public Library.

The concept is simple: read books, discuss. But these clubs are not just about books. In an era where parents are crazy busy and kids grow up too fast, it's an opportunity for mothers and daughters, a group arguably hard-wired for conflict, to slow down and communicate. "Reading and talking together can enrich our relationship with one another," notes Shireen Dodson, author of "The Mother-Daughter Book Club." And it doesn't matter if the book is a Newbery Medal winner like Sharon Creech's "Walk Two Moons," a popular book-club title or a volume in the trendy "Gossip Girl" series. "Just the fact that the mother would do this speaks volumes to the daughter about how important she is," says Roni Cohen-Sandler, a psychologist and author of "I'm Not Mad, I Just Hate You!" a book about defusing mother-daughter tension. It's a good time, too. Or as Brianna Weisbord, a 12-year-old in a Los Angeles group, puts it, book-club books are "a fun read. You don't have to highlight or anything."

So why aren't father-son book clubs right up there with Little League as a national male-bonding pastime? Variations on the mother-daughter book club do exist, but not on the same scale. Children's book author Jon Scieszka sums up the gender gap by describing his experience in a Brooklyn father-son book club several years ago. The group, dubbed "Books and Balls," with an emphasis on the latter, met at an indoor soccer space where the boys would eat pizza, play soccer with their dads and, oh yeah, talk about a book. "One boy was eloquent about his fear. He said, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa. Are we talking about feelings here? Let's not get into that. This is a book club'," recalls Scieszka. "A lot of literary fiction explores feelings and emotions. Most boys feel like this is a trap."

Mother-daughter book clubs have a shelf life. When the girls enter high school, the demands of schoolwork and extracurricular activities can make it more difficult to keep a group going. And, let's face it, hanging with your mom may not be a priority. But the shared experience and mutual understanding it engenders can be an important chapter in the lives of mothers and their adolescent daughters. You don't have to be reading the same book to be on the same page.