For the love of reading
Reading for school and reading in school are not the same thing. The Cedar Shoals book club is entirely devoted to making reading an enjoyable activity for everyone involved.
“I think it’s just such a good escape sometimes, and you just never know what you’re going to receive when you read a book. You can go in with a preconceived notion of what you think the book is going to be about, but almost always it’s going to shock you,” book club member Chloe Smith, 12th grade, said.
The club is a space that readers find comforting and fun, where they can interact with other people that share a common interest.
“I think that it’s just a really comforting place to be. It’s accepting of anyone and everyone who has a passion for reading. And I think that there’s a really strong community built within the club that anyone can be a part of,” Smith said.
Media specialists Kerry Hogan and Megan Ogden are the sponsors of the club, working to make the club a welcoming and enjoyable space for all.
“If you’re looking for a group that is game for anything that wants to push their thinking and practice their discussion skills this is the group for you. It’s a low-key group. And I think that it welcomes anyone and everyone as long as you’re willing to play along with all of our shenanigans,” Ogden said.
The club will follow its past schedule of reading two books per semester and having two meetings per book.
“We normally do two meetings per book. One of them like passing out the book or introducing the topic, and then we’ll do another meeting later on after most people have finished the book and talk about some of the major plot points or thoughts and feelings about what happened in it,” Smith said.
The meetings are get-togethers where the members can talk with each other about the book they have just read, usually while eating snacks and playing games that tie into the book. Additionally the club will sometimes go on field trips that are themed around the current book.
Some of the past trips include a trip to the botanical gardens after reading a book about plant magic, and the Fernbank museum after reading a book about an artist.
There has also been interest in adding more meetings to the book club schedule.
“I think me and Ms. Hogan realized last year that celebratory meetings are what you guys want. Like I heard loud and clear that book clubs students wanted to meet more,” Ogden said.
The complication to adding more meetings is that book club members also participate in many other extracurricular activities.
“I played around with that idea to make it more consistent. It’s just hard because book club, students tend to be students who are also softball players, volleyball players, SGA members, ME club members, BEE club members and hope students, so it’s just hard to do something consistent because we’re always missing out on some of our students,” Ogden said.
The book club started the year off by reading a mystery book titled “Ace of Spades” by Faridah Ábíké-íyímíde. The next book will be the fantasy book “A Deadly Education.” Members have also voted on reading a romance book in the near future. Through reading and discussion, book club members explore hard topics in a tangible way.
“Our goal for our students is to try to push students to read things that maybe they wouldn’t necessarily read if they weren’t in book club,” Ogden said. ¨I wanted more books that were so interesting that I just needed to talk to someone about them. Because what books can do is they can take really abstract issues or really abstract concepts and they put it into a tangible story that you can see. And then all of a sudden, those really hard abstract concepts become something that you can talk about.¨
Book club members agree that the club can enhance their enjoyment of reading even more.
“I’ve always had a big imagination. So when I read a book I can clearly imagine the characters and everything that’s happened. When I read a book I can go to another world, or live another story through the character’s eyes. I just really enjoy it,” senior Delysia Griffith said.
