In 2014, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Community launched its first Community Read program. The original tagline for the program was “One Book, One Week, One Community.” The featured book that year was Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. During the span of a week, various people (including me) led discussions of the book at the different branches of the library. The Community Read program has evolved over the years. It is now a month-long program involving numerous community partners and featuring several books that all speak to a common theme. For this year, the theme is gentrification and its impact on established neighborhoods.
This year’s Community Read program kicks off on March 1, 2022. One of the people who is coordinating this program is Meryle Leonard, the Assistant Director of Outreach at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library. I contacted Meryle and asked her for more information about this year’s Community Read program. Here is what she sent to me:
The Community Read program has been a part of Charlotte Mecklenburg Library’s programming footprint since 2014. I am excited, grateful, and humbled that I’ve had the opportunity to not only be a part of this program but manage and implement the program for many years. This is such a rewarding experience because it has allowed me to meet wonderful people and work with many community agencies and organizations, building long-term relationships and partnerships. This outcome didn’t happen by chance, it developed as the program evolved.
The Community Read program has intentionally changed, grown, and evolved from a library-led program to a community-led program supported by library staff and resources. When the program began, the library selected and offered one book for the community to read and planned programs for one week to support the book. Now with over 30 partners, the program has books and events throughout the month of March, for all ages and reading levels. This year, our signature title is Tomorrow’s Bread by Anna Jean Mayhew. Our companion titles are children’s books Windows by Julia Denos and The Blue House by Phoebe Wahl. We have two middle-grade books, Take Back the Block by Chrystal D. Giles and The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora by Pablo Cartaya. For teens and those who enjoy the young adult genre, we included the book Pride by Ibi Aanu Zoboi. All the books have the common theme of gentrification and urban renewal. Readers, book clubs, and students can get together virtually or safely in person to discuss the additional themes found in all the books. Speaking of finding the books, most books are available for check out in several formats, but also available for free at all our locations, while supplies last. This is a far cry from our one book-one-week program.
The goal is to engage 10,000 people, 10% of our county in the program. With this ambitious goal, we have an interactive component, Beanstack Reading Challenge. Participants can log reading and activities. We invite everyone to register online for our virtual authors’ events featuring Anna Jean Mayhew, Chrystal D. Giles, and Ibi Zoboi.
Let’s get on the same page. Consider this an official invitation to join the March 2022 Community Read program. Information about the Community Read can be found on our website.
I have had the pleasure of reading Anna Jean Mayhew’s Tomorrow’s Bread, the signature title for this year’s Community Read program. Tomorrow’s Bread is a historical novel set in Charlotte in 1961. It shows how Charlotte’s urban renewal program affected the lives of the people whose homes and neighborhoods were destroyed to make room for new real estate projects. Published in 2019, this novel provides a vivid portrait of daily life in the African American neighborhood of Brooklyn just before it was bulldozed. In my opinion, Tomorrow’s Bread is a perfect choice for this year’s Community Read program, for its Charlotte setting resonates with Charlotte readers. The book’s historical insights provide today’s readers with a better understanding of how the gentrification process has shaped the history of our city and the development of our neighborhoods.
I urge everyone to participate in this year’s Community Read program. By reading books in common and discussing them together, we can make Storied Charlotte a true community.
