One of the Senior School co-curricular groups that has continued to meet regularly online throughout the spring term is Trinity College School’s White Pine Book Club. The White Pine program is part of Ontario Library Association’s Forest of Reading, which each year creates lists of selected titles aimed at specific age ranges and from which readers can vote for their favourites. In light of COVID-19, our White Pine readers have gathered via Google Meet each Monday to discuss the selections for high school aged readers.

This year’s book list was well received; readers were fairly united in their enjoyment of most titles. It was fun to have a couple of titles where support was divided, which made for entertaining debate! We are looking forward to the live awards ceremonies, to be streamed on CBC (www.cbc.ca/books) on Tuesday, June 16th. Our readers are hoping that others across the province agree with our pick: The Loves & Lies of Rukhsana Ali. We were pretty excited to connect with author Sabina Khan through Twitter!

Some of the feedback from our White Pine readers:

“I loved getting to read books I usually would never pick up. I loved getting to talk with other people about books we all read and I loved feeling accomplished after reading all of them.”

“I liked getting new books to read I probably wouldn’t have read otherwise.”

“I really liked discovering new and amazing books, and I find it really cool that the authors are from Canada. I also absolutely love the White Pine event in Toronto, so I was quite sad to miss it this year.”

Because our readers have been so keen to talk about what they’re reading, we’re excited that book club will continue meeting weekly through the summer. Students interested in joining the discussion can email me at sstraughan@tcs.on.ca to be invited!

- By Ms. Shelagh Straughan, Senior School librarian