Professors shared books with young students Oct. 18 through 24 as part of the Hillsdale Community Library’s Teen Read Week activities.
Four professors read at the invitation of Laura Negus, Children and Teen Service Librarian and wife of Visiting Professor of History Samuel Negus. Negus, Lecturer in History Miles Smith, Assistant Professor of English Kelly Franklin, and Art Department Chair Barbara Bushey each took a day of the week to read aloud to the library’s after-school patrons. Hillsdale Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s Pastor Everett Henes also read.
Laura Negus said she hoped to remind students hanging out at the library that there are books to enjoy apart from required school reading. The week’s theme was “Get Away.” While the week’s offerings were not heavily attended, she said she thinks those who were present enjoyed it.
“I think it’s just a nice offering for people to be able to relax and enjoy a good story,” she said.
Besides watching her husband read to students, Laura Negus said her favorite part of the event was seeing evidence that the books were reaching some of their listeners.
“The day after Barbara Bushey read, one of the kids who was listening to the story came in to check out the book that she had read,” she said.
Samuel Negus answered the call of duty when his wife asked him to read Roald Dahl’s “Matilda.”
“Obviously it’s about a little girl who reads a lot and she has idiot parents who want her to watch TV and not be so impertinent and book-learny,” he said. “And so she finds clever ways to get her own back on them and so the moral of the story is if you read you win.”
Samuel Negus said about six students attended his reading of the book’s opening chapters.
“You can only try to encourage people and make the facility available,” he said.
Smith read “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell.
“It’s a story about man becoming both hunter and hunted,” Smith said. “It’s set in a South American jungle. There’s a Cossack general who hunts people. He brings stranded shipwrecked sailors to his island and hunts them, and he has an agreement that if they can beat him they can live and get off the island, if he wins then obviously they get killed.”
Smith said the work is a bit in the tradition of Poe, and that he had wanted to read something the students may not have heard of.
“I think they enjoyed it, the ones who stayed for most of it,” Smith said. “A lot of them have cell phones when they are eight years old, which is something I did not have, so it’s harder to keep focus when there are exciting things like checking whatever there is to check on your cell phone. But it went really well. There were maybe three kids who stayed the whole time, so that made me feel good. I knew I had reached someone.”
Laura Negus said she hopes to put on similar events in the future, especially as the weather declines and the library becomes a more popular hangout. Children’s books, she said, are accessible to anyone.
