Book Clubs Are Back
Library offers multiple reading opportunities for students
The High School Library resumed weekly book clubs after seven years and started a new Library Advisory group.
There are three library book clubs that rotate meetings every Tuesday after school. In Read Your Own Book students talk and recommend books they have recently read. Silent Book Club members sit on comfy chairs and read quietly. Traditional Book Club offers students the option to read an assigned title and then four to six weeks later, discuss.
Freshman Zara Troup joined a book club because she thinks that books are a way of escapism. “I’m just able to see this other world and the fact that someone else was able to come up with these is amazing,” she said.
Teacher Librarian Robin Sweigert is in her eighth year of teaching but only her second year doing any book clubs. “The first year I was here the book club members were seniors, so once they left we didn’t really have a book club,” she said, “This year it’s mostly freshmen.”
Sweigert wishes more people would come. This year the turnout has been an average of four people every meeting, but they make do and explore different genres. “Most people in my group read the same genre as me but some read fantasy,” freshman Lara Girault said. Girault prefers to read “realistic fiction with a twist.”
Library Advisory is another opportunity for students to be involved and help out in the library. This is the library’s first year offering this option. Before and after school and during study halls, students run Chromebooks to classrooms, help pick books for the library to buy, make displays and bulletin boards, as well as other things the library needs. “The students get to help select the books to purchase because they’re the ones checking them out,” Sweigert said. Twelve people participate in advisory officially, and Sweigert thinks the club is “going well.”
Sweigert sees plenty of benefits in Library Advisory. A survey of students’ reading preferences showed that 70 percent of people prefer reading physical books rather than reading online. Sweigert sent out an email asking for Manga, a genre of Japanese graphic novels and comics, recommendations and in one class she got about 50 titles. Students are still coming to the library often and the need for advisory is there, according to Sweigert.
Senior Sofia Baris is an active member of the Library Advisory and enjoys her time in the club. She said, “This is a really great alternative to spending time in my study hall bored.”
