A love affair with books

In English, we have the term bookworm to describe someone who is always reading. According to historian Nick Kapur, most every other language has a similar phrase. In Spanish and French there is book rat, in Finnish there is chapter maggot, and in Norwegian there is reading horse.

All describe animals consuming and devouring books, something that some of us can relate to, especially given the relentless subzero temperatures and increased time in isolation.

Wrenshall library media assistant Chloe Swanson is what would be called a book moth in Swedish. She has designed a host of activities to share her passion, starting with a calendar of reading challenges in the latest issue of the school newspaper. Students are encouraged to complete activities and return the signed calendar to the library. For an additional prize, students can write a note about a favorite book or share something that they learned.

There is also a caterpillar contest as part of "I Love to Read Month." Students fill out circles for books or pages they read with additional circles describing favorite parts of the books. The circles make up the caterpillar bodies, which have been stretching through the halls of Wrenshall the last couple of weeks. The contest is open until the end of March. Chloe says the second-graders' caterpillar is leading the pack.

When I asked Chloe which books seemed to be the most popular in the library, she said she is constantly refreshing the Black History Month displays with new material. She also said graphic novels are in heavy rotation - especially the "Amulet" series and "Cleopatra in Space."

Her nephew Leo can corroborate the popularity of "Amulet." His mother, Ellie Swanson, said they checked out the first of the series on Thursday and read it with Leo's third-grade cousin - then finished the series over the weekend. Ellie Swanson's students at Wrenshall love the series as well, and they are so popular that they have to have two sets in the classroom and could probably do with a third.

Chloe doesn't just recommend books to students, she makes suggestions for her colleagues as well. English teacher Ted Conover said he took her advice and read Trevor Noah's memoir "Born a Crime."

"It was a quick read and brimmed with outlandish and altogether hilarious stories from his childhood in South Africa," Ted said. "It also addressed apartheid in an approachable and insightful way that revealed the insidiousness of institutional racism."

The Swanson sisters just finished the "Throne of Glass" series with what their father Joel describes as "cultish enthusiasm." For his part, he picked up Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" again. "I'm captivated by his rich, fantastically colorful characterization and his ability to paint a scene that puts me in the room with the characters."

I was curious about what the wider Wrenshall population has been reading, so I called a couple of our main business operators to see what they have by the nightstand these days.

While he has been working so much it's hard to find time to fit in reading, Devon Dahl at the Wrenshall General Store said that the last good book he read was "The Poet," by Michael Connelly. The author creates a police procedural crime drama that is interwoven with literary references from the work of Edgar Allan Poe. Dahl appreciated the detail Connelly employed throughout.

The owners of the Brickyard, Byron and Caroline Johnson, have similar time constraints while running their business. But Byron finds time to sneak in some pages of tractor magazines and the once voracious reader Caroline now appreciates gardening books.

Local resident Dale Wolf has been able to work from home, and when he is not feeding his birds he has been reading. The "Audubon Birdhouse Book" by Margaret Barker and Elissa Wolfson was high on his list.

Ted Conover shows the film "Dead Poets Society" in his English classes. Students Kaya and Pidge watched it again and started texting each other about how cool it would be to be part of a secret society. After talking for a bit, they decided to start their own, where they would read and discuss books, write letters, cook, paint, and consume and create art.

Pidge told me about the book club in an email: "Our first book we read (and Kaya's favorite thus far) was 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' ... (The discussion) started off with things like, oh, so Dorian is kinda weird. But after a few meets we got into the groove of it. We try to alternate between one classic and one young adult book. In fact, our most current book (and my personal favorite thus far) that we've just finished is 'The Black Flamingo' by Dean Atta. This book is phenomenal, and I would seriously recommend it to anybody."

Book fever has definitely hit Wrenshall.

Contact Annie with any Wrenshall news at annes [email protected].