I know I have posted about National Ambassador for Young People's Literature Gene Luen Yang's Reading Without Walls Challenge before. But I just heard Gene Yang at ALA, and he inspired me to remind you. He told a great story about his next book, which is about basketball, even though until fairly recently he was not even remotely interested in basketball (partly due to their tendency to hit him in the head). He discussed how reading a book outside his walls led to breaking down all sorts of other walls for him, and it was thrilling to hear about the challenge put to work.
In fact, I'm thinking of putting together a challenge for librarians to do this fall--wouldn't that be fun? Folks could commit to reading a book outside their regular comfort zone and then share a review or a conversation about it...Still thinking about the details, here, so if you have any ideas of how you'd like this to play out, let me know.
In the meantime, as you select your books to help you relax and unwind from a frenetic-paced summer, consider the challenge, and choose one book that fits these criteria:
1. Read a book about a character who doesn’t look like you or live like you.
2. Read a book about a topic you don’t know much about.
3. Read a book in a format that you don’t normally read for fun. This might be a chapter book, a graphic novel, a book in verse, a picture book, or a hybrid book.
Labels: Gene Luen Yang, reading without walls, we need diverse books
