Reading Together: The community that reads together grows together.

By Miriam Downey

 

Mothers do it with their toddlers!
School children do it every day.
College kids have to do it!
And now, you can do it together with the community.

Most of us were read to as children. We read together in our “reading groups” in elementary school and in literature classes in high school and college. In our adult years, however, most of us find reading to be a solitary activity, punctuated by occasional discussions with a spouse about articles in the paper.

The Kalamazoo Public Library has developed a rather amazing community program based on the premise that people love to discuss what they have read. For the past four years, the library has chosen a book to encourage community-wide reading and discussion. The books have tended to be issue-oriented to provoke discussion. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury discussed censorship and totalitarianism. Barbara Erinreich’s book Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America exposed the problems faced by low wage workers and had a huge impact on the community discussion on poverty in SW Michigan. Last year, author James McBride came for a public discussion of his memoir, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother. The next night the community was treated to a concert by his jazz band.

This year the library has chosen to read a Viet Nam war memoir, The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien. Reading Together coordinator, Joan Hawxhurst, feels the selection of The Things They Carried will encourage broad participation from across the community, especially those touched by any of the wars fought by the U.S. in the past 60 years. "The selection committee felt that The Things They Carried offered everything we look for in a Reading Together book: well-crafted writing, meaty issues that will provoke deep discussion, and accessibility to readers of all levels. This book will appeal to a wide spectrum of county residents and will draw new participants into the Reading Together program.”

 

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