Local communities engrossed in "one book" trend

Certain book titles are popping up frequently in the region this summer, but they're not the latest best sellers.

Mount Laurel readers are pondering reservation life in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Medford students are revisiting World War II through The Book Thief. Glassboro residents are contemplating poverty, homelessness, and mental illness in The Glass Castle.

Local towns and school districts have embraced the "one book, one community" trend that has spread across the nation since 1998 with increasingly elaborate programming.

The Lenape Regional and Glassboro School Districts jettisoned the usual grade-specific summer reading lists and picked a single novel for each high school.

And Camden County College, the Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts, United Way of Salem County, Upper Darby Prayer Chapel Community Outreach Services, and West Chester University recently received federal grants ranging from $9,945 to $20,000 for community reading projects in 2009-10.

"The range of ingenuity around the country from any number of organizations in making these books come alive is amazing," said David Kipen, director of literature and national reading initiatives for the National Endowment for the Arts, which made the grants.

Lenape Regional hopes to engage tech-savvy teens with podcasts, blogs, and local-access cable television, said assistant superintendent Carol Birnbohm.

Camden County College will study John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath through scholarly discussions and a traveling stage adaptation by Allison Green, artistic director of the Readers' Theatre Project of American Literature. Festivities will begin Oct. 29, the 80th anniversary of the stock market crash preceding the Great Depression.

"I love to watch people who thought they never loved literature see it come alive," Green said. "It's not just black letters on a page anymore."

"One Book" community-wide reading projects began at the Washington Center for the Book in Seattle in 1998 and spread throughout the United States and abroad. The annual "One Book, One Philadelphia," a joint project of the Mayor's Office and Free Library, started in 2003.

The NEA started its "Big Read" grant program in response to a 2004 report, "Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading," which found that less than half of American adults read at least one book a year for fun.

"Put aside professional and nonfiction reading and the numbers came up depressingly short," Kipen said.

Three years later, a broader NEA study confirmed the downward trend among all ages and education levels, posing potentially serious community consequences, Kipen said. Researchers found that pleasure readers were more likely to volunteer, vote, and attend sports and cultural events.

In response, many organizations, including the NEA, began reading initiatives. The Big Read has awarded more than 800 grants, including 269 announced in June.

In 2008, a third study, "Reading on the Rise," showed "the minutest uptick" in pleasure reading after 26 years of decline, Kipen said. "But now is not the time to ease up."

The NEA allows grantees to choose from a list that has grown from four American classics to about 30 U.S. and international novels and poetry collections. It also provides study and teaching guides.

The titles are still not the first books readers tend to grab off a shelf, said Camden County College's Green, a speech professor. "You're more apt to pick up The Devil Wears Prada."

Rutgers hopes the adventure and Arctic setting of The Call of the Wild will appeal to boys, who are among the most difficult readers to attract, said Noreen Scott Garrity, curator of education and community arts at the college's Center for the Arts.

"It was also one of the books that had a Spanish translation and study guide," she said.

Working with the Camden Free Library, Rutgers is considering a prized-filled "Idita-read" and snow dog-themed family movie festival to generate interest. It also plans events with Camden public schools, Scott Garrity said.

Lenape High English department coordinator Jeremy Knoll also considered reluctant readers when he advocated a fast-moving young adult novel. A challenging summer assignment without teacher guidance frustrates some students to the point of giving up, he said.

The Absolutely True Diary "is like a book you'd pick up when you go to the beach," Knoll said. "It presents big social problems everyone can discuss."

In addition to students, organizers of the book projects hope staff, parents, and community residents read and participate in coming events.

"There's no one book that will appeal to everyone," said Lynn Hartman, Glassboro High School English department chair. "We thought [The Glass Castle] came close."

South Jersey high schools:

Lenape Regional High School (Mount Laurel): The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Seneca High School (Tabernacle): The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Cherokee High School (Marlton): The Book Thief

Shawnee High School (Medford): The Last Lecture

Glassboro High School: The Glass Castle

NEA "Big Read":

Camden City: The Call of the Wild

Camden County: The Grapes of Wrath

Salem County: My Antonia

Upper Darby: Their Eyes Were Watching God

West Chester: Sun, Stone, and Shadows

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