Tag Archives: books
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The Rabbit Rabbit book club

by on 04. Jan, 2012 in Jenn Finley

As the librarian, I implemented a book club 3 years ago. The students generally read about 5-6 new novels in the club per year as this is about all their busy schedules will allow. Coincidentally, some of the reads have also been made into films so we’ve been able to read and also screen the films. We’ve even had some guest speakers such as Dr. Del Vecchio who spoke to us about Chinese history during the Cultural Revolution after reading “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress.” We then viewed the film of the same name and Mr. Shi’s wife prepared us a yummy authentic chinese meal. Other reads such as “Water for Elephants”, “Never Let Me Go” and “WarHorse” have also lent themselves to the discussion of the book and film translation. Currently though we have read two books with the word rabbit in title : “Down the Rabbit Hole” and “When God was a Rabbit.” Our busy schedules have not allowed us to discuss these yet but very soon. Neither has been made into a film yet either but, they were all the buzz at the “Edinburgh Book Festival” which I attended this past August. I have a feeling one of them will be made into a film when it makes it across the pond to the US. Next up  to read is yet to be determined but, I am almost certain it will not have rabbit in the title!

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New bottle, old wine. Sort of.

by on 29. Nov, 2011 in Joy Sawyer Mulligan

Two years running, I tried a hand in each camp: one edition of The Catcher in The Rye (what we fondly came to call the “Wee Version”–the maroon cover most readers recall) in my right for the students who’d purchased that one, and in my left, the other–larger format, red carousel horse, sunshine yellow title, a reissue with 1950s cover art. Given how much in-the-text work we do, this juggling made me feel even clumsier than I actually am, but mostly it just took too much time to get everyone on the right page, right paragraph, right line. What with all that, plus reading glasses perpetually slipping southward on my nose and having to get to the other side of the room to re-up the heat every once in awhile, it was just too much.

So this year, we English 1 teachers were determined: it would be all for one and one for all, the reissue.  No choice.  And for me, sadly, the one with dramatically less marginalia and far fewer Post-its marking especially critical annotations.

Of course, on the plus side, the print was significantly bigger. And, serendipitously, another benefit: I had company. A student who’d studied the novel last year had, on our first day with Salinger, come smiling through the door with the Wee Version, confident that his thoughtful 8th-grader scribbles and highlighting would give him a leg up on the nightly reading and daily discussions. I tried rallying his better nature with the cry of the Three Musketeers, clapping him on the shoulder for emphasis– we’d be fellow travelers on a sail through the pages of a fresh, unmarked copy of the novel.

“Really? I can’t just use this one again?” He smiled hopefully.

“I know you’re comfortable with it, but no. If I can do it, you can do it. We’ll both wean ourselves off what we thought we thought about Holden. It’ll be fun.”

As the chapters ticked by, we both saw parts of the novel differently or more fully than before. For me, the very words on the page–a different font style and size from what had become so familiar to me over several years–yielded more meaning as I read each night’s assignment. In a sense, the medium was a whole new message–an object lesson in the value of even small changes for opening the mind one or two cranks wider.

 

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What goes around

by on 07. Nov, 2011 in Joy Sawyer Mulligan

. . . keeps going around. There’s probably no sense in even trying to find the first link in my personal chain of Shared Lit (not an academic course you can sign up for, but, rather, a course of action, a version of call-and-reponse, of good-reads-as-boomerangs). The latest chapter goes this way: Jackson–a senior–and I spent time together in English 1 three+ years back. Every now and then in the interim, we’d run into each other on campus and exchange gotta-read titles. I trusted his judgment and choices–”his” books never disappointed, always got me thinking in a direction I hadn’t considered before–narrative, voice, point-of-view, subject.

Last year, Jackson took on an Independent Afternoon Project in writing (creative non-fiction), to which I served as the advisor. At first, I set him loose in the library, where he’d slouch down in one of the leather wingback chairs with whatever I’d suggested he read to get the gears greased for his own work. After that, once he began writing, our weekly meetings focused on his creations: in my office in the house, he’d read his stories aloud, and we’d talk about challenges he was having, possible solutions. I’d give him more pieces to read. He’d come back with more of his own writing.

One day this fall, Jackson saw me on the Pergola and said he’d run into a wall with a piece he’d been working on, a story inspired by Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants. (Thacher students tend to aim high, and with good reason.) Could we talk?

Ummm. Yes.

And before the time was done, Jackson had dug into the binder of material he’d studied this summer and found one story–then another, then another, and a fourth–to loan to me.

So, on last week’s school holiday, I slept a little later than my usual 5:55 (no Zumba on a holiday, thank goodness), got up to fetch a cup of coffee, then crawled back into bed–unheard of school-year luxury!–to snuggle down with a dog-eared photocopy of Tobias Wolff’s Bullet in the Brain.

Ball’s in my court, I guess.

 

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Are books becoming extinct?

by on 25. Oct, 2011 in Jenn Finley

As a librarian I am constantly bombarded with the issues surrounding this debate. Many of my peer librarians at other schools are pushing all the gadgets that publish books in digital formats. And although I do see value in such items, condone the use of them and provide such items for students, it may be suprising for you to know that many of our students still enjoy feeling the paper and cuddling up in the corner with a book no matter it’s age or condition. ( I offered the ability to read on the IPad to my book club. I barely had any takers.) I am constantly asking for feedback from students about their experiences with reading on the IPad, ITouch, Kindle, Nook, etc. I am searching for them to substantiate all the dogma and propaganda surrounding the death of the book. I have as of yet to conclude that this generation has completely done away with the paper format. Therefore, I find it hard to believe that books will become extinct as of yet, if ever. And yes I have seen the statistics ( I often wonder who is generating them) and  many technological devices that make reading in a digital format possible, portable, easy and all you could want to read at your fingertips. However when I am with other librarians and we are conversing about the needs of our community and library, I find that not always but usually I am one stating how our students still enjoy the book in its paper format. Thacher has recently been referred to as  “Frontier Schooling” and I’d like to believe that in some way we still maintain a little piece of a “Frontier Library.”

 

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