A New Chapter for Falmouth Academy’s Book Club

Falmouth+Academys+Book+Club+has+become+an+official+After-School+Activity

Ursula Junker

Falmouth Academy’s Book Club has become an official After-School Activity

Ursula Junker, Independent Writer

FA has a new elective this year: the Book Club, run by Ms. Santamauro and open to all bibliophiles. 

This week, the group met on the sunny hill behind the art room, where they sat on towels in the grass. The members laughed as they summarized the recent chapters of the novel they were reading, and read snippets out loud.

The group grew out of last year’s “Books and Butterflies” after-school gatherings, where students could chat about books while raising the Monarch butterflies Ms. Santamauro kept in a library terrarium. 

“We thought we would just chill, hang out, [and] talk about books,” said Adele Francis ‘24, a member of the original group.

During remote school, Books and Butterflies morphed into a virtual book club. “[It] was a nice format, because on Zoom, you can really talk and share,” explained Ms. Santamauro. “During the lockdown it evolved as a group… And then the group said, ‘Let’s do [this] every other week during the summer.’ ”

The members began by using the free books available online through the program YA Sync, a virtual weekly book club for teens. They later picked their own books. They were a small but enthusiastic group, and Ms. Santamauro decided to continue the book club as an elective this school year.

“If you share a book, the characters just come to life and you can really talk about, ‘Wait, why did this happen in that book, and what did you think about it?’” said Ms. Santamauro.

Adele elaborated on the significance of communal reading, “I really do love talking to people about books. I read a lot, but because I don’t have a lot of friends who read as passionately as I do.” She added, “When reading a book there’s so often that you have that moment of, ‘Omigosh, why did this character do this?’ The anger, or the sadness, or even the happiness…”

Ms. Santamauro nodded in sympathy.

“And you want to share that feeling with other people, so the emotions are more real,” Adele said.

The book club chose several social justice and equality-related books to focus on before and during quarantine, including The 57 Bus, a true story about gender identity and juvenile court, and Funny, You Don’t Look Autistic, an autobiography by an autistic teenage comedian.

 “Those type of books, where you can really get a deeper sense of other people’s experiences, and really understand where they’re coming from, and lose your angst to talk about difficult topics,” said Ms. Santamauro, “because you share that you’ve read the book, you can talk about it in a way that you normally wouldn’t really be able to.”

Heightened empathy and awareness isn’t the book club’s only area of interest, though. “We didn’t always want to read autobiographies or realistic fiction…once we had a fantasy book. That was also interesting, because it opens up this whole new world… You can dream a little bit, think about possibilities, which is also fun.” 

The choice of books is up to the readers, Ms. Santamauro said, “We make suggestions and then we say, ‘Ok, how do we feel about this book?’ together, and then we just come up with the books we want to read.”

The nascent group hopes to grow in numbers in the future. “There’s only four of us at the moment,” said Adele.

“Yeah, it’s small,” Ms. Santamauro agreed.

“Well, five,” amended Adele. “Ms. Santamauro is definitely part of the book club.” 

“We’re always open for new members and want people to join if they want to talk about, you know, good books,” she said. “Right now we’re reading The Song of Achilles.”

“This is my personal favorite book,” enthused Adele. “Madeline Miller. My favorite author ever.”