Download Community Read-In Flyer
Join the reading celebration become a community volunteer reader. 2015-16 Volunteer Community Read-In Coordinators: Donna Evans –Burke, Renee Wilson, and Faye Wilson Kennedy For more information please contact: Faye Wilson Kennedy at e-mail: faye@bluenilepress.com.
The Community Read–In Project will kick-off in November 2015 and run through April 2016. Hosting a Community Read-In event can be as simple as bringing together friends to share a book, or as elaborate as arranging public readings. We are calling on parents, educators, grandparents, students, youth groups, businesses, schools, colleges, children’s programs, and places of worship, book clubs, libraries, literary groups, bookstores, and the general public to read with us now through 2016. Therefore we are encouraging schools, youth groups, churches, libraries, bookstores, community and professional organizations, and interested citizens to read and discuss at least one book selected by the SBBF planning committee based on our theme.
You can purchase the books at underground bookstore, 2814 35th Street, Sacramento, CA 95817 ;( 916) 737-3333. Tuesday through Saturday or visit your local library.
Written as a series of letters to his teenaged son, his new memoir, Between the World and Me, walks us through the course of his life, from the tough neighborhoods of Baltimore in his youth, to Howard University—which Coates dubs “The Mecca” for its revelatory community of black students and teachers—to the broader Meccas of New York and Paris. Coates describes his observations and the evolution of his thinking on race, from Malcolm X to his conclusion that race itself is a fabrication, elemental to the concept of American (white) exceptionalism. Ferguson, Trayvon Martin, and South Carolina are not bumps on the road of progress and harmony, but the results of a systemized, ubiquitous threat to “black bodies” in the form of slavery, police brutality, and mass incarceration. Coates is direct and, as usual, uncommonly insightful and original. There are no wasted words. This is a powerful and exceptional book.--Jon Foro.
The Three Doctors, as the subjects of this inspirational book call both themselves and their nonprofit foundation, grew up in a tough neighborhood in Newark, NJ. Draper tells an epiphanic story featuring each of the young men by turn, followed by his comments on how a single event affected him across time. Davis, for instance, remembers the hospital where he later became an emergency-medicine physician as the same one where his foot was treated after an incident when he was six. Hunt recalls first meeting Sampson and Jenkins in ninth grade. Jenkins tells of the friends' success at moving from high school to college. Draper adds dialogue and evokes the pivotal moment in each vignette as though it were a scene in one of her realistic novels. The book takes the young men through college and medical school and into their careers. While Jenkins seems relatively calm and serious from the beginning, Hunt found himself in trouble right into medical school. Davis had trouble getting an emergency-medicine internship–and then found himself back in his Newark neighborhood, right where he knew he'd be serving his hometown.
Imani wants to touch the moon. She is eager to achieve something great, just like the heroes do in the stores Mama tells her each night. But how can a tiny girl soar so high in the sky? Day after day the other children tease and taunt her, yet Imai stays determined to reach the moon. So, like a warrior, Imani jumps, higher and higher, until she lands on the moon.
Africa is where the first people were born. It has many resources, from diamonds to corn. The book is a bright-colored, quick rhyming journey through the lives of history makers: billionaire businessman Reginald Lewis, Harlem Renaissance novelist Zora Neale Hurston, entertainment powerhouse Oprah Winfrey, and others leap from the pages. Skip along with places, events, and inventions significant to the Black experience. Craig Thompson tells the stories in kid-speak, with carefully chosen words that summarize the contributions covered. And the backdrop for his words are the toasty hues and primary colors of illustrator Roger James.
For more information please contact: Faye Wilson Kennedy at (916) 484-3750 or by e-mail: faye@bluenilepress.com
