By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
A PICTURE may be worth 1000 words but high school librarian Lynne Moller still encourages her book club students to read those words.
When Lynne joined Endeavour Hills’ Gleneagles Secondary College in 2006, one of her first decisions was to establish a book club for students from year seven all the way through to year 12, many of whom participate in the group for each of the six years.
Starting with 12 students at its inception seven-years-ago, the Gleneagles Book Club now has close to 50 members.
“As the librarian I didn’t always get to study with kids one-on-one and I wanted to be able to help my own group,” Lynne said.
“This isn’t a regular book club because I have so many kids from different year levels and we do different activities.”
These activities include everything from going on excursions to the cinema to watch movies adapted from books, to visits from popular authors, illustrators and booksellers.
“I wanted to create a place where the kids could share in their love of reading,” Lynne said.
“It encourages them to get together and meet new people from different year levels.
“It’s a very hands-on book club. Today we had teachers coming in and telling the students about what they read and their experiences with reading.”
One of these was Shane Papatolicas, who teaches English at Gleneagles for year’s 8, 10 and 12. Shane was born in America and spoke to the book club members about his upbringing and the influence that reading had had on his life.
Shane said Lynne was always looking for English teachers who wanted to speak to the book club about their enthusiasm for literature and books.
“We take any opportunity we can to get kids interacting with books,” he said.
“This is the first time I’d spoken to the students and I didn’t know what I was going to speak about at first but I chose to talk about the US and my experience with books in high school.”
Shane praised Lynne’s involvement with the book club and holds high hopes for its future.
“Lynne’s always trying to organise people to speak at the school, including published authors,” he said.
“Stuff like that just goes so far.”
