Christina Baker Kline at Moses Lake, WA
An excited crowd came out to meet #1 New York Times bestseller Christina Baker Kline in Moses Lake,WA this February, including a 12-year-old girl who checked out Orphan Train just before Christina’s arrival and decided to stay for the Orphan Train presentation. Said librarian Paula Walters: “She for sure will be a lifelong reader!! Also, I have been getting emails from members of our book clubs thanking me. Moses Lake was just thrilled.”
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Margot Mifflin is the author of, Blue Tattoo and Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo. Books in Common recently asked her a few questions on her Community/Campus Reads speaking engagements, and how her books work as subjects for these programs.
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We recently sat down with Kelsey Timmerman, journalist and author of two books, Where Are You Wearing? And Where Are You Eating?
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Danny has never felt that he fit in. In Matt de la Pena’s Mexican WhiteBoy, Danny is a bi-racial teenager struggling to find his identity. After living with his mother in a primarily white culture he decides to spend the summer in Mexico. It is here he stays with his absent father’s family and meets Uno. While his friendship with Uno is founded on a mutual love of baseball, the boys relate to each other on a much deeper level, as their life struggles are similar. It is within the confines of their friendship that Danny learns to accept his multi-cultural background and instead of trying to separate the pieces, learns to trust and accept himself as a whole.
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Christina Baker Kline, NYT Best Selling author of Orphan Train, visited the community of Woodstock, CT in February. Coordinator Deb Sharpe: “Her presentation was loved by everyone. I have gotten several positive emails from our patrons already! I would highly recommend her to any library. Thanks for your help in getting her here!”
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We recently chatted with Sulin Jones, senior librarian at the Mono County Free Library, about their community reads program. Mono County Community Reads recently hosted Luis Carlos Montalvan, author of Until Tuesday, in 2013, and will host David Carle, author of Traveling the 38th Parallel: A Water Line Around the World, in April.
Books In Common: Would you tell us a bit about your program? For instance, how long has the Mono County Free Library been hosting a Community Reads event, how did it get started, and how have you seen it change since your involvement with it?
Sulin Jones: Mono County library first hosted a community read in 2008, when we received a grant to participate in the NEA’s Big Read.
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To commemorate the ten-year anniversary of its publication, Soho Press will release a new edition of How Evan Broke His Head, by Garth Stein, the author of New York Times Bestselling and beloved contemporary classic, The Art of Racing in the Rain. The new edition, which will hit shelves on March 18th, will include a never-before-released conversation between Garth and his editor, Bryan Devendorf, drummer of The National.
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For many readers, news that their favorite book will be adapted to film can be thrilling. Films bring the words to life, create new worlds and transform beloved characters into living, breathing flesh and blood. Films make us see these books in new ways, especially when artistic license is taken in condensing and enlivening long books into neat, two-hour packages.
And yet… how often have we heard friends lament, or complain ourselves: the book was better! Sure, films are great, but they don’t offer the same inclusion of the book. Watching a film, the viewer is merely an observer, and doesn’t feel everything the character feels, as you would when reading the book. There are no limits, no restrictions, no computer-generated-images trying to suspend your disbelief.
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Reyna Grande, author of Across a Hundred Mountains, Dancing with Butterflies, and The Distance Between Us, is a sought-after speaker at middle/high schools, colleges and universities around the country. Born in Mexico, Reyna was raised by her grandparents after her parents left her behind while they worked in the US. She came to the US at the age of nine as an undocumented immigrant and went on to become the first person in her family to obtain a higher education. We spoke with Reyna about her most recent book, The Distance Between Us, and her thoughts about how to engage readers, particularly students.
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Ted Kavich, program and educational services manager for Fairfax County Library, takes All Fairfax Reads in a new and exciting direction!
BIC: The Fairfax Reads program was recently transitioned into a Book Club Conference model. What made you decide to make this switch, and how has the experience been so far?
TK: Actually, September’s Book Club Conference was just one of the new directions we hope to explore in the coming months/years. There are so many cool, “outside the box” kinds of events we’d like to coordinate, and of course our time and resources are limited. Thus, All Fairfax Reads (a successful program series for sure) was retired so we could move forward with some new and innovative types of events. The Book Club Conference was an amazing start to this effort – a hugely successful event with great turnout (250 attendees, our max capacity due to venue size), completely positive feedback, and an excellent keynote speaker (Will Schwalbe). We are so glad we reached out to book club members in our community – they came out in force to support an event geared to their interests and needs.
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