The Power of Book Clubs

"We were to experience how the ordinary pebble of ordinary life could be transformed into a jewel through the magic of fiction." (Reading Lolita in Tehran, 8)

To anyone who is a reader, there is no doubt that books change lives. The only thing stronger than a good book is the powerful conversations that surround that text. This is where the true power comes in.

Reading instruction at the secondary level is a tricky thing. How do you teach a seventeen-year-old mother to read? Where do you start? Do you do a miscue analysis and examine her grapho-phonic mistakes? You can. But imagine engaging her with literature that is on her life-level (Tatum) instead of on her reading level and then following up those textual experiences with genuine conversations. It is this type of reading, the reading for a discussion, that changes the nature of reading itself. This type of dialogue, with peers and with the text itself, help readers to rethink and re-envision who they are in context to their lives and how those lives relate to the text and the world around them.

Book clubs are our best chances to reach these students who feel like school has stopped reaching out for them. They view reading as a chore, not something that is enjoyable. Reading is a stringing together of symbols on a page. It's a scavenger hunt for similes and metaphors and foreshadowing, but not for understanding. Students don't search for how these things relate to the beauty of the work; they just know what these things look like in order to bubble in the right answers. But imagine a group of girls looking at the way a simile wraps itself around a comparision to create the image in a reader's mind. Imagine looking at the way a metaphor showcases the craftiness of an author.

This won't happen in isolation. But it can happen in valid, real-life conversations about books. It can happen in book clubs.

I'm looking forward to seeing the year-long effects of book clubs on teenage girls. The potential for life changes is great. As I work my way through the Nafisi memoir about her female book club in Iran, I see that book clubs can and will change the lives of the students involved in them. The conversations just need to be guided.