Darrell Laurant: Move over, Nintendo, the books are calling

Even now, in this age of multiple electronic distractions, there is something deep-rooted and appealing about books.

Just ask Isaiah Blake, Trey Ware, Connor Lee, Coleman Inge, Joshua Daniel, Brycen Stratton, Tyler Simmons, Jake Oliver and the Monroe twins, Steven and Anthony.

When that group of Concord Elementary School fifth graders gathered in the school library for their final session discussing Gary Paulsen’s “Mr. Tucket,” last Wednesday, it was almost like they were saying goodbye to a friend. There was pizza, and cake, and then each student tossed his copy of the book into the center of the table.

“I want to do another book club,” said Anthony Monroe.

Video games and cable TV are windows that we look through, the view always changing. Books are doorways. Perhaps the frenetic pace with which information flies at us these days makes us long for something we can control. With books, it’s all up to us — to keep reading, to take a break, even to read the ending first.

It takes awhile to finish a book, which imprints it on our memory in a way that a fleeting electronic amusement cannot. Who remembers a video game played last week?

“This was the first time I’d had a reading club for boys,” said Concord Elementary librarian Jenny Rosser, who presided over the group during part of the school’s lunch hour, “and I was pleasantly surprised. We had girls last semester, and they were great, but I think the boys got more into the discussion part.”

“Mr. Tucket” is about a boy who is captured by the Pawnees during a wagon trip along the Oregon Trail, and how he survives, and eventually escapes with the help of a one-armed mountain man. People die in this book, and at least one of them is scalped.

“It’s a little graphic in spots,” Rosser said, “but fifth-grade boys don’t mind that.”

Obviously not, because her ten club members were eager to answer the questions Rosser tossed out as she stood next to their table. Simultaneously, four boxes worth of pepperoni pizza were disappearing.

“The idea is to lead them to books that would interest them,” she said. “It’s definitely not a one size fits all, but they all like adventure.”

According to Rosser, the boys came from a cross-section of Concord Elementary fifth-graders.

“They don’t all hang around with the same groups of friends,” she said, “and that made it even better. The only way I could do this, though, was because Mr. (Dan) Frazier (the school principal) took my lunch duty for me on the days when the club met.”

Reading a book collectively is a bonding exercise, because every reader experiences the same words.

“Some of them read the whole book all the way through right at the beginning,” Rosser said, “but they were very good at not giving away the ending to the ones who hadn’t gotten that far.”

As for Jenny Rosser, she also enjoyed “Mr. Tucket.”

“I read it in one night,” she said, “and then I read it again.”