Reading club

“ READING CLUBS FOR OLDER BOYS AND GIRLS Another method used successfully by a number of libraries to interest older boys and girls as they grow away from the story hour is that of the reading circle or reading club. Miss Caroline Hewins' contribution to the Child Conference at Clark University in 1909 was an account of this work in the Hartford Public Library, of "book-talks at entirely informal meetings." ”

“ The club need not always be for reading, but must depend on the resources or interests of the boys and girls. There is no need of debating clubs in our library, for the city is full of them, but they may be the very best thing that the librarian in the next town can form.
A reading club must not necessarily be a club for the study or enjoyment of stories, history or poetry. Under the guidance of the kind of librarian who aims far above her audience, it may turn into something like Mr. ”

“ Any boy or girl is welcome to the club who wishes to come, provided he or she is of the right age or grade to enjoy the stories, reading, or study that is interesting the others. Boys and girls who are doubtful are invited to come and see what the club is as often as they will, until they have quite made up their minds whether or not it is something they want. The only thing required of them is to follow the one general rule underlying all the clubs of the library—the Golden Rule, that their behavior shall in no way interfere with the pleasure or rights of the other members. ”

“ An Authors’ Club, where none but authors are admitted, is a good thing. The members learn there that there are other authors than themselves. Poets’ Clubs are a good thing; they bring poets into contact with each other, and they learn what a bore it is to have to listen to a poet reading his own poem. ”

“ PRIVATE theatricals and dramatic or Shakspeare reading clubs are among the fashionable amusements of the present day. Many, I know, disapprove of them; but I think they do far more good than harm. They certainly strengthen the lungs, memory, and improve the intellectual tastes. But I will not discuss the subject, as far abler pens than mine have already argued on both sides of the question. Private theatricals amuse a large circle of friends, and any club willing to undertake the presentation of plays deserves the thanks of the audience. ”

“ The librarian in the school has expert aid in this club work. For the library reading club on art she selects the most inspiring and sympathetic art teacher on the faculty. For those who are reading Darwin and Spencer and Huxley, the finest teacher in biology who thoroughly knows the literature and can make the reading mean much. For those interested in civic and social questions, clubs for discussion and debate are formed with English and history teachers for advisers, but all center in the school library and meet there after school. ”

“ Not the least important contribution of club work to the library is the direction of the reading of boys and girls of the intermediate age—always such a difficult problem. Most of the children of the age when clubs begin to appeal to them strongly —from 12 years on—have reached a stage of mental development at which they should be reading, under direction, books from the adult as well as the juvenile collection. ”

“ You never see a child unshod or ill-clad. Very rarely do they allow a relative to receive aid from the parish.
“I tried a reading club for winter evenings, but found they liked their own fireside better. Happily, there is, in my part, no public-house within six miles; still I must say drink is the vice of some. In winter they have much leisure time, in which there is a good deal of card-playing. Still some like reading; and we have among them now a fair lot of books, mostly from the Pure Literature Society. They are proud and independent, and, as you say, must be dealt with cautiously. ”

“ A girls' club on the lower East side have been reading the old English comedies—"She stoops to conquer," "The rivals," "Lady Teazle"; then there is a flourishing Shakespeare club, which to honor the Dickens centenary this year, voted to make the study of the great writer a part of this year's program. This club meets once a week, and at one meeting the outline of one of the great tales was told by the librarian. This was followed by the girls reading one or more of the most famous chapters or dialogues. ”

“ So the girls all talked at once, or at least, two at a time, and explained that they wanted a literary club, and while they all liked the boys and would be glad of their assistance in plays and tableaux, yet they knew that if boys came to the meetings, there'd be little or no serious reading done. ”

“ After school, also where the library is large or there are two rooms, students may stay to study,—tenement homes and apartments are often difficult places for quiet work. For our own school a biography reading club has been a great success, the students reading interesting biographies of famous women, Alice Freeman Palmer, Carla Wenckebach, Jane Addams, Florence Nightingale, etc. ”

“ The reading-rooms at the club are a favourite lounge of a great many of the students, but it must be admitted that the literature supplied there is not always of a very wholesome kind, seeing that it includes 'realism' of the most daring description, with illustrations to match, and obscene Parisian comic papers. Every member of the corps also belongs to one of the minor clubs of which it is made up, and which are apparently nothing more than messes, very often with only a dozen members, or less. ”

“ It is better in organizing a club to have some common ground of interest and begin with a small number. It cannot always be done in a city in or through the library, except indirectly, by means of a Settlement or other club. One that I know does very good work in its meetings with the Settlement headworker and has a small collection of books and pictures from the main library for six months, and a more elementary bookshelf for a younger club with whom one of the members is reading the same subject. ”

“ The woman's club and the travelling library seem made for each other. So perfectly does the travelling library supply a suitable channel for the energies of the woman's club, and so admirably does the woman's club seem fitted for the work of sending out travelling libraries, that the one seems the natural and perfect complement of the other.
What a box of well-selected reading matter means to a rural community probably only [Pg 195] those know who have lived in a rural community without the box. ”

“ An endeavor should be made so far as possible to follow the inclinations of children. Every boy likes the idea of belonging to a club and if advantage is taken of this fact it will prove a great help in discipline. When a gang of boys comes to the library night after night, apparently for no reason except to make trouble, the best solution of the problem is to form them into a reading circle or club. They usually prefer to call themselves a club. A good plan in starting is to ask three or four of the troublesome boys if they would like to come on a certain evening and hear a story read. ”

“ At the Arts, I believe, some of the members sometimes hang up pictures of their own for exhibition and criticism, but at no other club is there any recognition of Art. There are good libraries at two or three clubs, but many have none. In fact, the clubs which belong to gentlemen are organized as if there was no other occupation possible for civilized people in polite society, except dining, smoking, reading papers, or playing whist and billiards. ”

“ Such use is encouraged by the existence of literary or art clubs and reading circles. They supply the twofold want of companionship and culture. The proper basis of association is similarity of interests. Local history or geology, nature study, current public events in State or nation, art in some of its phases, or the literature of a particular country or period, may be the special consideration of a club or reading circle; in every case the library is the laboratory of investigation. ”

“ There is no place where a person has greater need of restraint and consideration for the reserves of others than in a club. In every club there is a reading-room or library where conversation is not allowed ”

“ They are in their nature more refining and intellectual. It is astonishing, when people really put together, in some one club or association, all the different talents for pleasing possessed by different persons, how clever a circle may be gathered,—in the least promising neighborhood. A club of ladies in one of our cities has had quite a brilliant success. It is held every fortnight at the house of the members, according to alphabetical sequence. The lady who receives has charge of arranging what the entertainment shall be,—whether charade, tableau, reading, recitation, or music ”

“ Sometimes where there is no library at hand, a Magazine Club makes a good preliminary step to larger things. Members tell a chairman what magazines they take, and agree to have them at the home of the chairman one day each week or fortnight. She will look them over and divide the contents into several parts, travel, biography, essays, stories, poetry, and so on. Then she will portion out among the members parts of the programs; one meeting may be on travel only, a second on essays, a third on poetry, three or four members reading selections from articles on these. ”

“ The club has a growing library and reading-rooms, with a very large number of periodicals, scientific and literary, on file. If such clubs as this, and equally inexpensive, were founded in our large American cities, they would afford a much-needed means of communication between workers in different branches of science. ”

“ It had everything else a good faculty club should have: brown leather armchairs, old magazines, fresh newspapers, a dusty chess board, cut glass decanters ... it was a place well suited for comfortable reading, talking and drinking—except for the quality of the whiskey. ”

“ Such a club, meeting two or three evenings in a week, will be able to get through a very large amount of good reading in a few months, and what seemed labor at first will soon become a genuine pleasure and a means of intellectual recreation. ”

“ Library reading clubs are a great power for influencing the reading of high school pupils. It is the age of clubs and organizations. In the books the pupils choose while browsing the librarian finds a point of contact and by the reading clubs can direct the voluntary reading. Interests unsuspected by teachers are revealed to the school librarian. An interest in art by a pupil thought hopeless in mathematics and physics and only a fair student in other things. ”

“ She associates with other girls in a set that is less democratic than her brother's gang. It has its rivalries and enmities, but hateful thoughts, angry words, and slighting attitudes take the place of the active warfare of the boys. Girls enjoy clubs that are adapted to their interests. Reading clubs, cooking clubs, sewing clubs, musical organizations, and philanthropic societies are useful forms of neighborhood association, and their activities may be correlated with the work of the home, the school, and the church more easily than those of their brothers. ”

“ The house may be full of books, the libraries may be as free and as unstrained of impurities as city water; but if we wish to read anything or study anything we resort to a club. We gather together a number of persons of like capacity with ourselves. A subject which we might grapple with and run down by a few hours of vigorous, absorbed attention in a library, gaining strength of mind by resolute encountering of difficulties, by personal effort, we sit around for a month or a season in a club, expecting somehow to take the information by effortless contiguity with it. ”

“ Every one is a part of many clubs, the object of which is knowledge and the broadening of the intellectual horizon. Science, languages, literature, are their daily food. They can speak in tongues; they can talk about the solar spectrum; they can interpret Chaucer, criticise Shakespeare, understand Browning. There is no literature, ancient or modern, that they do not dig up by the roots and turn over, no history that they do not drag before the club for final judgment. In every little village there is this intellectual stir and excitement ”

“ The social features of some of the book clubs are, however, reduced to the occasions of the annual meetings and dinners. The "Club-Room Question," in one of these organizations having a membership of five hundred, distributed in one hundred and sixty-seven cities and towns in this country and abroad, was recently reported upon by the Council as follows:—
The question of providing and maintaining club rooms and establishing a suitable library for the Society has been more or less discussed since its incorporation. ”

“ Seldom does a week pass without a crowd of children coming to us petitioning for the use of one of the club rooms. Often these clubs are of short duration, but some of them have been in existence for years. Sometimes they are literary, sometimes purely social—but more often dramatic. In the dramatic club the children, starved for the brighter things of life—can pretend to their hearts' content, and their keen imagination can make it all vividly realistic for them. They choose their own plays, draw the parts, make their costumes and carry out their own conception of the different roles. ”