Frye Academy helps students deepen their love of reading

To many book lovers, the next best thing to reading a good book is debating it, dissecting it and sharing your feelings about it with others who have read it.

Students at the Frye Academy know that feeling well.

"I love to meet people who love books, who love reading books and also like to talk about it," Dominique Desrosiers, a Grade 12 student at École Mathieu-Martin in Dieppe, N.B., said on Information Morning Moncton.

Vote for a favourite

The Frye Academy allows students like Desrosiers to meet, read and debate contemporary Canadian books every year.

Frye Academy jurors then vote for their favourite, and the winning author is invited to the Frye Festival being held this week in Moncton.

Emma Parlee, a Grade 10 student at JMA Armstrong High School in Salisbury, N.B., said two books had a strong impact on her this year: Wake the Stoneman, the winning book, and Le vent en parle encore, the book she voted for.

Both are about residential schools and the effect they had on First Nations communities.

"I was just so glad I got to read these books and learn the things I did, because they weren't books I would have regularly picked up," she said on Information Morning Moncton.

"It was great to be able to talk to somebody about a book that we had both read."

Parlee said both books were good, but felt Le vent en parle encore was more raw and intense and thus not as suitable for younger students.

"It was very interesting, but also terrifying to learn all the details of the horrible, horrible things that went on and how all of these kids were scarred for life," she said. "And people got away with things that you could never ever get away with now. Well, I hope not."

The Frye Festival wraps up Saturday.