Friday, December 28, 2012

World Book Night 1013 - Spreading the love of reading, person to person!

World Book Night is an annual celebration dedicated to spreading the love of reading, person to person.  Each year on April 23, tens of thousands of people in the U.S. go out into their communities and give a total of half a million free World Book Night paperbacks to light and non-readers. The date was chosen because it is the UNESCO International Day of the Book, as well as Shakespeare’s birthday! It was also chosen in honor of Miguel de Cervantes, who died on April 23,1616 (the same day as Shakespeare). In the Catalan region of Spain, the day is celebrated by giving a book and a flower to a loved one.  World Book Night was first celebrated in the UK and Ireland in 2011; in 2012, it was also celebrated in the USA and Germany.
  
The goal of World Book Night is to seek out adult readers wherever they are, in towns and cities, in public settings or in places from nursing homes to food pantries, low-income schools to mass transit, to encourage reading in the adult population, especially those who may not have access to printed books for reasons of means or geography.

The 30 books selected to be given away are:

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
City of Thieves by David Benioff
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
My Antonia by Willa Cather 
Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (also available to be given away in Spanish)
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (also available to be given away in Spanish)
The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
Bossypants by Tina Fey
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Playing for Pizza by John Grisham
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
Moneyball by Michael Lewis
The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life by James Patterson
Population: 485 by Michael Perry
Good Omens by Terry Patchett and Neil Gaiman
The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
Montana Sky by Nora Roberts
Look Again by Lisa Scottoline
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
Favorite American Poems; Large Print edition

If you would like to be a book giver you can apply now at www.worldbooknight.org now through January 23, 2013 by providing answers to several questions and picking a book title to give out from the above list. We are excited to again be selected as a book pick-up location.