Summer Book Project
Each spring, the Fieldston summer book committee, comprised of faculty and students, chooses one book to bring the community together in a common reading experience. All Upper School students and faculty are asked to read and contemplate the book before the beginning of the school in the fall.
In the fall, the summer book serves as the springboard for the Modified Awareness Day - or MAD - usually held in November. The MAD focuses on the major themes of the summer book and consists of an assembly and concurrent sessions during the day that are voluntary for students and faculty.
In 2006-2007, the book committee chose Truman Capote’s classic novel, In Cold Blood, which afforded the school the opportunity to discuss a number of issues from capital punishment and the judicial system to the way that the media portrays current events. In 2009-2010 the summer book was Ken Kesey’s novel of the insane asylum, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which led to many discussions of the meaning of insanity and authority, the nature of the human mind, and the Vietnam war. 2010-2011’s summer book is Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, an account of what happens to a Syrian-American man and his family after Hurricane Katrina.
|