WTHS Student Book Club

Welcome to the WTHS Student Book Club page. The goal of the Book Club is to connect students to books in an ongoing effort to create lifelong readers. The club is open to all students in grade 9-12. Book Club members meet on a monthly basis to discuss various books that are selected by the group.

Meeting Schedule

All meetings take place @ 2:20 in the IMC. Meetings are open to any student who has read that month's book. Please join us!

February 26th

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail  Bill Bryson

Author Bill Bryson provides an account of his experiences hiking the Appalachian Trail with a childhood friend, telling of how they survived a blizzard, got lost, and had encounters with eccentric characters, and rude yuppies along the way.

March 25th 

Looking for Alaska  John Green

April 29th

A Room on Lorelei Street  Mary Pearson

To escape a miserable existence taking care of her alcoholic mother, seventeen-year-old Zoe rents a room from an eccentric woman, but her earnings as a waitress after school are minimal and she must go to extremes to cover expenses.

May 27th

Chanda's Secret  Allan Stratton

Chandra Kabelo, a sixteen-year-old in a small South African town, faces down shame and stigma in her efforts to help friends and family members who are dying of AIDS.

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Special Events

Attention Sports Fans!
Sam Carchidi
Sports Columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and author of Bill Campbell: The Voice of Philadelphia Sports &  Miracle in the Making: The Adam Taliaferro Story

Will Visit WTHS
Monday, March 3rd Details to follow.

Carolyn Mackler Visit May 9th              

 The WTHS Student Book Club is excited to announce that award  winning young adult author, Carolyn Mackler will be visiting the IMC on Friday, May 9th.

    Mackler, who “has a knack for getting into the minds of teens, capturing their angst, inserting a dose of irreverent humor, and putting it all in her books,” will meet with two groups of students to discuss her writing process and inspiration for her popular books: Love and Other Four-Letter Words, The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, Vegan Virgin Valentine, and her latest novel, Guyaholic. To learn more about the author visit carolynmackler.com

Photo by Waldemar Reichert

2008 One Book Township

    To prepare for her visit, the book club will be hosting after school discussions of this year’s One Book Township selection, The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things. “Mackler does a fine job of introducing girls to a very cool chick with a little meat on her bones” in the Michael L. Printz Honor Book.  WTHS students will enjoy the humor and insight Mackler uses in this spunky yet touching novel. After school discussions will take place on April 8, 22, & 29. Any student who has read the book is  invited to attend any or all of the discussions. Those who attend will be invited to meet and speak with Carolyn Mackler during her visit on May 9th. Copies of the book are available in the IMC so stop in today!

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Previously Discussed Titles

Nineteen Minutes  Jodi Picoult 

The people of Sterling, New Hampshire, are forever changed after a shooting at the high school leaves ten people dead, and the judge presiding over the trial tries to remain unbiased, even though her daughter witnessed the events and was friends with the assailant.

So Yesterday  Scott Westerfeld

Hunter Braque, a New York City teenager who is paid by corporations to spot what is "cool," combines his analytical skills with girlfriend Jen's creative talents to find a missing person and thwart a conspiracy directed at the heart of consumer culture

A Thousand Splendid Suns  Khaled Hosseini.

A novel set against the three decades of Afghanistan's history shaped by Soviet occupation, civil war, and the Taliban, which tells the stories of two women, Mariam and Laila, who grow close despite their nineteen-year age difference and initial rivalry as they suffer at the hand of a common enemy: their abusive husband

The Kite Runner  Khaled Hosseini.

Amir, haunted by his betrayal of Hassan, the son of his father's servant and a childhood friend, returns to Kabul as an adult after he learns Hassan has been killed, in an attempt to redeem himself by rescuing Hassan's son from a life of slavery to a Taliban official.

The Christopher Killer by Alane Ferguson

On the payroll as an assistant to her coroner father, seventeen-year-old Cameryn Mahoney uses her knowledge of forensic medicine to catch the killer of a friend while putting herself in terrible danger.

2006-2007 School Year

The Glass Castle 
by Jeannette Walls
The second child of a scholarly, alcoholic father and an eccentric artist mother discusses her family's nomadic upbringing from the Arizona desert, to Las Vegas, to an Appalachian mining town, during which her siblings and she fended for themselves while their parents outmaneuvered bill collectors and the authorities.
 

The She 
by Carol Plum-Ucci
After his parents are lost at sea, Evan Barrett and his older brother leave their seaside home in West Hook to escape bad memories, but years later even worse questions emerge when Evan is asked to help a fellow student deal with another sea-related tragedy.
 

Armageddon Summer 
by Jane Yolen & Bruce Covillle
When Reverend Beelson proclaims that the world will end in the year 2000, Marina and Jed's parents take them to a mountain to witness the Righteous Conflagration that will end the world, but Marina and Jed begin a new love.Fourteen-year-old Marina and sixteen-year-old Jed accompany their parents' religious cult, the Believers, to await the end of the world atop a remote mountain, where they try to decide what they themselves believe

The perks of being a wallflower
Stephen Chbosky
In a thought-provoking coming-of-age novel, Charlie struggles to cope with complex world of high school as he deals with the confusions of sex and love, the temptations of drugs, and the pain of losing a close friend and a favorite aunt.

Twilight
Stephenie Meyer
When seventeen-year-old Bella Swan leaves Phoenix to live with her father in Forks, Washington, she meets an exquisitely handsome boy at school for whom she feels an overwhelming attraction and who she comes to realize is not wholly human. An ALA Top Ten Book for Young Adults.

As Simple as Snow
Gregory Galloway
In awe of enthusiastic high school girl Anna Cayne and her penchant for affectionate magic tricks and riddles, a man is baffled by her mysterious disappearance just before Valentine's Day and begins to retrace the time they spent together for clues to her fate.

The Book Thief
Markus Zusak
Living with a foster family in Germany during World War II, a young girl struggles to survive her day-to-day trials through stealing anything she can get her hands on, but when she discovers the beauty of literature, she realizes that she has been blessed with a gift that must be shared with others, including the Jewish man hiding in the basement. Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors

Once the Acacias Bloomed: Memories of a Childhood Lost
Fred Spiegel
Fred Spiegel was born in Dinslaken, Germany in 1932.  After Kristallnacht, his parents sent him to live with relatives in Holland.  With the German invasion of Holland, he was sent to three concentration camps.  After the war, Fred was reunited with his mother and sister. His memoir describes the lives of the victims and survivors prior to 1933 and the survivors after 1945.  It also tells the story of his childhood from Kristallnacht to his life in the concentration camps to his liberation in 1945.

The Book Club would like to thank Mr. Fred Spiegel for his presentation on Friday, March 2nd  as part of Read Across America 2007. Mr. Spiegel spoke to students about his childhood in German concentration camps and how he survived the Holocaust. He was gracious enough to sign copies of his book, Once the Acacias Bloomed: Memories of a Childhood Lost, and answer any additional questions they had for him. The Book Club was excited for this experience after discussing his memoir earlier in the week.

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