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Family Literacy Day is Jan. 27, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore books the rest of the year. If you don’t know where to start, two book clubs based out of the Lethbridge Public Library’s downtown and Crossings branches are happy to point you in the right direction.
“We’re all readers, so reading a book a month isn’t a problem,” said Sheila Braund, a long-standing member of the Definitely Not Plato reading group. For the past dozen years, the group has met on the fourth Monday of every month in the library’s Community Meeting Room to discuss favourite books. The committee meets in June to determine the books that will be read in the next year. All of the members get to submit their favourites, both new and classic releases, though the library must ensure it has enough copies of the book for everyone to read.
“We don‘t read a lot of pop fiction like Danielle Steele, but we read a lot of award-winning books,” she emphasized.
This month the group is reading Calgary-based author Betty Jane Hegerat’s latest creative non-fiction story “The Boy.” Hegerat has released several others including “Delivery,” which was shortlisted for the 2010 Alberta Literary Awards George Bugnet prize.
She will be in Lethbridge to speak with the group when it meets Jan. 25, though this is a special event.
“We don’t do this very often because we don’t have any money for it, but we will for local or southern Alberta authors,” Braund continued.
Hegerat is the mother of one of the librarians, so she was a perfect fit for the event. She was part of Lethbridge’s first Word On The Street festival this past summer, as well.
Braund is excited about this event and introducing the book to the group members.
“I read the book in three days; I couldn’t put it down,” she said, adding she’s excited she was able to recommend it to the group.
Braund said her favourite part of the club is being able to discuss favourite books.
“And it’s great to be able to draw people to our favourites.”
The group also video conferences with members of the club living in rural areas, who are connected to the Chinook Arch library system. They can log in at 7:30 p.m. on the fourth Wednesday of the month at their closest library to join the discussion, though Braund doesn’t know the exact number who do.
“A lot of them live in rural areas, so they have to drive to get to that library,” she said.
Crossings branch teenbrarian Paige McGeorge is excited about the first year of her Parent Child Book Club, which meets on the first Tuesday of the month at the Crossings branch library. Instead of discussing specific books, they discuss genres.
“It’s aimed at middle-school students, Grade 6-9, and their parents,” McGeorge explained.
“It isn’t a traditional book club in that we don’t read the same book each month, but we do discuss books from the same genre,” she said.
So far, members have discussed mysteries and fantasies. At the next meeting on Feb. 7, they will discuss Fairy Tales.
“We also watch a lot of book trailers,” she continued, adding she shows them to the group via streaming YouTube. Book trailers summarize books the same way movie and TV show trailers summarize movies and TV shows.
The group usually draws four or five young people along with their parents, which makes for a nice, intimate group.
“I wanted to do something that was primarily focused on middle schools because that’s a good age to get into books,” she said.
“It gives them the chance to do some reading outside of school, but at a more critical level than just pleasure reading.”
The club also gives her a chance to do a little “market research,” to see what kind of books middle-school readers are into and pass that information along to the board to use when expanding its collection.
She noted there is a lot of interest in adventure or quest stories, especially Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series.
“They like stories where a lot is happening and spy stories are really popular. They seem to like books with a lot of stuff going on,” McGeorge said.
“Often they’ll come up with ideas and ways of looking at the books that I had never thought of. I might think something is lame, but they’ll say, ‘No way. That’s really cool.’”
Family Literacy Day is Jan. 27 and this year’s theme is “searching for literacy,” so the library is hosting an ongoing activity leading up to Jan. 27.
“Parents and kids can pick up a passport at the library. There are 10 quests in it. They have to do things like look up the capital of Latvia or read with their family. If they complete five of them, they can enter their names and phone numbers into a draw for a really big prize. I don’t know what it is, but it will be very cool,” McGeorge said.
Also on Jan. 27, the movie “Dolphin Tale” will be screened in the Theatre Gallery at the downtown branch at 7 p.m. and there will be a storytime at 10 a.m.
For more on the library’s programming, visit www.lethlib.ca. |
