We had our last Book Club of the school year on Wednesday. This Book Club was very special since Ms. Nellis and Ms. Batarseh are both retiring. They both happen to be avid readers and have been coming to Book Club since its inception. So it was only fitting that they take over the final Book Club to talk about some of their favorite books.

Ms. Nellis started us off by sharing her Top 10 books in chronological order:

1. Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
2. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
3. Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver
4. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
5. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
6. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
7. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
8. Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig
9. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
10. The Library Book by Susan Orlean

Ms. Nellis also talked about the perks of being in a book club and reading books you wouldn’t normally read. She also mentioned how she doesn’t read as much during the school year, but plans to read more in retirement.

As most of us know, Ms. Batarseh is a prolific reader so to share her favorite books, she had to narrow it down by topic. The following are Ms. Batarseh’s favorite works about trees:

1. The Random House Book of Poetry – “Who Has Seen the Wind?” by Christina Rossetti
2. New and Collected Poems – “A Black Birch in Winter”
3. The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
4. Lives of the Trees by Diana Wells
5. The California Field Atlas by Obi Kaufman
6. Aeneid by Virgil

Ms. Batarseh and Ms. Nellis were also awarded Matthews Library cards for life, and we hope they return often to use them!