(October 1, 2008 - September 30, 2009)
The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress and its centers in the 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. Virgin Islands together form a network whose influence is far greater than the sum of its parts. In fiscal 2009 the center continued to fulfill its mission of promoting reading and literacy through its successful and innovative programs, several of which are focused on young readers. In addition to maintaining its state centers (and adding a new one), several important organizations joined the more than 80 reading promotion partners already allied with the Center for the Book. A highlight of the State Center program was the new center in the U.S. Virgin Islands, bringing to total number of Center for the Book affiliates to 52.
As it has since its founding through Public Law 95-129 in 1997, the center relies on private funding to support all its activities; only its staff positions are paid through appropriated funds.
Highlights
Focus on Young Readers
Although the Center for the Book’s programs and activities are for people of all ages, it has made a special effort in recent years to target young people. This focus includes the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature program, the new Young Readers Center, (set to open in the Jefferson Building in October 2009) and two websites: the new site at www.read.gov and a redesigned and more user-friendly Center for the Book site at www.loc.gov/cfbook. These new programs and websites are joined by the long-running Letters About Literature and River of Words programs.
The first National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature www.childrensbookambassador.com, noted children’s author Jon Scieszka, continued in his second year of the program that promotes the importance of reading to young people nationwide. The position is administered by the Center for the Book and the Children’s Book Council. Scieszka will end his tenure in December 2009 and a new ambassador will be named in January 2010 for a two-year term.
Scieszka has proved to be an enormously popular choice and has traveled the nation promoting literacy among young people. Scieszka was the featured author in two programs during the 2009 National Book Festival, as one of the authors of the “Exquisite Corpse Adventure” (see below ) and in the Children’s Pavilion with illustrator David Shannon.
Also in the area of outreach to youths, the center finalized plans for the opening of the Young Readers Center in the Jefferson Building. The Young Readers Corner is a showcase for Center for the Book national projects that promote reading and literacy among young people. Its overall purpose, however, is broader: to increase public awareness of efforts throughout the Library to promote books, reading, literacy and learning for the same audience. The Young Readers Center’s immediate focus is on providing personal and family “reading-aloud” experiences, supplemented by demonstrations of the Library’s online educational projects aimed at younger audiences. Future programming activities will include book discussions by prominent authors who write for young people. Many of the activities of the center will complement those of the Library’s Educational Outreach Division, and the center will collaborate with other Library divisions on other programs, such as presentations for young people by Library curators.
National Book Festival
As always, the Center for the Book took the lead in organizing the program of authors for the 2009 National Book Festival, held on Sept. 26. This year, more than 70 authors and illustrators participated and more than 130,000 attended, setting a new record. President and Mrs. Obama agreed to co-sponsor the festival. Several “blockbuster” authors such as John Grisham, John Irving, Paula Deen, Jodi Picoult and Judy Blume – most of whom had never participated in the festival – made presentations.
John Grisham was given a special award by Dr. Billington in the Fiction & Fantasy Pavilion. This was the first presentation of the National Book Festival Creative Achievement Award. The previous day, Grisham was honored during a luncheon at the Hay-Adams.
The Center also organized the Pavilion of the States for festivalgoers to learn about Center for the Book reading and literacy promotion projects as well as the literary traditions of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories. Representatives from throughout the nation provided information and answered questions about their state’s writers, libraries, book festivals, book awards and reading promotion activities. In addition, several festival authors and illustrators made scheduled visits to their state’s table to greet fans and sign autographs.
A popular pavilion feature, especially among young readers and their families, was “Discover Great Places Through Reading” -- a free map of the United States that was presented at each table for an appropriate state sticker or stamp. The map included “52 Great Reads About Great Places,” which is a reading list of books for young people compiled with a recommendation from each state. The map-brochure was newly designed this year, for ease of use.
The 14th edition of the Congressional Club Cookbook was sold in the pavilion. The cookbook offers recipes from around the world and includes inaugural ball portraits of presidents and first ladies, as well as photos of historic sites around Washington. Revenue generated from cookbook sales helped support contributions made by the Congressional Club to a variety of local charities.
The Pavilion of the States’ major sponsor is the Institute of Museum and Library Services, with additional funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
National Treasures, Local Treasures: The Library of Congress at Your Fingertips Educational Tour
National Treasures, Local Treasures: The Library of Congress at Your Fingertips, an educational program that brings the riches of the Library to selected cities across the country, made stops in Denver (Oct. 27), Dallas (Nov. 24), San Francisco (Dec. 11) and Los Angeles (Dec. 12). The first stop was held during fiscal 2008, on Sept. 19 in Broward County, Fla.
The events featured Center for the Book presentations on the riches of the Library of Congress online collections, and teachers from the Library’s Educational Outreach Division offered workshops to local educators on incorporating these materials in their classrooms.
Local authors appeared during these events. For example, in San Francisco, Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, a California native, read from her work and was joined by a young California poet who had participated in the River of Words environmental poetry and art contest.
Event Highlights
The Center for the Book sponsored or co-sponsored nearly 30 events (see list below) in fiscal 2009 as part of its mission to promote reading and literacy. Most of the events were part of the Books & Beyond author series, which, since it was established in 1996, has brought hundreds of authors to Washington to discuss their work ad how they used Library collections. To increase the impact of these events, all programs are recorded for later webcasting. Among the highlights of those events in fiscal 2009 were:
2008
Oct. 4
The Americas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature was presented to Pat Mora (author) and Rafael Lopez (illustrator) and author Laura Resau. The event was co-sponsored with the Hispanic Division and the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs (CLASP).
Oct. 16
Books & Beyond program. Prize-winning author and New York Times writer Timothy Egan discussed and signed three new books in the Library of Congress "Field of Vision" series, The Photographs of Russell Lee, The Photographs of Marion Post Wolcott and The Photographs of Ben Shahn. The series is edited by Amy Pastan with photographs from the Farm Security Administration,1937‑1942. This event was co-sponsored with the American Folklife Center and the Publishing Office.
Oct. 29
Books & Beyond program. Children’s literature historian Leonard Marcus discussed and signed his new book, Minders of Make Believe: Idealists, Entrepreneurs and the Shaping of American Children’s Literature (Houghton Mifflin Co., 2008).
Nov. 3
Books & Beyond program honoring Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. Dr. Achebe discussed and signed the 50th anniversary edition of his classic book Things Fall Apart (Anchor Books, 2008). The Center for the Book co-sponsored the event with the African Section’s Africa and Middle Eastern Division and the TransAfrica Forum.
Nov. 7
Books & Beyond program. Prize‑winning journalist and author Tom Gjelten discussed and signed his new book, Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause (Viking Penguin, 2008). This event was co-sponsored with the Hispanic Division and the Humanities and Social Sciences Division.
2009
Feb. 9
Books & Beyond program. The Publishing Office’s Linda Osborne discussed and signed her new book, Traveling the Freedom Road: From Slavery and the Civil War Through Reconstruction (Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2009).
Feb. 24
"Robert Burns at 250: Poetry, Politics & Performance." In collaboration with the Scottish Government, the American Folklife Center presented a symposium on Burns’ life and work, as well as his impact on America and American culture. The symposium was organized by the American Folklife Center in cooperation with the Center for the Book and the Library’s Poetry and Literature Center.
March 23
Books & Beyond program. Kirstin Downey discussed and signed her new book, The Woman Behind the New Deal :The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience (Doubleday, 2009). This event was co-sponsored with the Manuscript Division.
April 15
Books & Beyond program. Author Paul Dickson discussed and signed the third edition of The Dickson Baseball Dictionary (W.W. Norton & Company, 2009); co-sponsored with the Humanities and Social Sciences Division.
May 14
Books & Beyond program. John Hessler, Christine Johnson and Nicholas Wey Gomez were participants in the international symposium "Exploring Waldseemuller’s World." The symposium was co-sponsored with the Geography and Map Division.
May 19
Books & Beyond program. The Publishing Office’s Ralph Eubanks discussed and signed his new book, The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South (HarperCollins, 2009).
May 27
Books & Beyond program. The Publishing Office’s Margaret E. Wagner discussed and signed her new book, World War II: 365 Days (Abrams, 2009) with Thomas J. Wiener and Athena Angelos.
Sept. 10
Jane Goodall discussed and signed her new book, Hope for Animals and Their World: How Endangered Species are Being Rescued From the Brink (Grand Central Publishing, 2009). The event was co-sponsored with the Science, Technology and Business Division.
The Goodall event was by far the best-attended of the Center’s events, with more than 400 attendees filling the Jefferson’s Building’s Coolidge Auditorium; more than 200 were turned away.
Reading Promotion Projects
New Read.gov Website
The Center for the Book collaborated with the Public Affairs Office, the Educational Outreach Division, Web Services and the Ad Council on a new multimedia website www.Read.gov that was launched during the National Book Festival on Sept. 26. The site offers in one place resources from throughout the Library designed to stimulate the reading of books and to interest users in learning about the authors and illustrators who create them. The site also puts users in touch with current authors and their works through webcasts and a new Facebook discussion group (see below). Within just one month of its launch, more than 15,000 had signed up to receive periodic e-mails of new features on the website.
A highlight of Read.gov is the exclusive story, “The Exquisite Corpse Adventure,” whose first episode debuted and was read by its author, Jon Scieszka, during a National Book Festival program in the Children’s Pavilion. Scieszka is the acclaimed author of “The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales” and the creator of the website Guys Read (www.guysread.com), a nonprofit literacy organization. The first episode was illustrated by Chris Van Dusen, who is the artist for Kate DiCamillo’s Mercy Watson series, among other books.
Other authors and illustrators participating in “The Exquisite Corpse Adventure” are M.T. Anderson, Natalie Babbitt, Susan Cooper, Kate DiCamillo, Timothy Basil Ering, Nikki Grimes, Shannon Hale, Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket), Steven Kellogg, Megan McDonald, Gregory Maguire, Fred and Patricia McKissack, Linda Sue Park, Katherine Paterson and James Ransome.
“The Exquisite Corpse Adventure” will comprise a total of 26 episodes, and its final episode will debut during the 2010 National Book Festival. It is a project of the Center for the Book and the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance (www.thencbla.org). The NCBLA, in collaboration with the Butler Center for Children’s Literature at Dominican University, also offered an online educational center (www.thencbla.org/Exquisite_Corpse/exquisite_home.html) on its website to accompany the “Exquisite Corpse.” Public Broadcasting Service’s Reading Rockets and AdLit.org offered K-12 students the chance to have some writing fun of their own with the Exquisite Prompt challenge (www.readingrockets.org/books/fun/exquisiteprompt).
Read.gov offers “audience” pages designed specifically for Kids, Teens, Adults and Educators & Parents. These pages contain resources such as webcasts in which authors discuss their latest works, digitized classic books with extraordinary illustrations such as Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” and Poe’s “The Raven,” and educational resources for parents and teachers.
A Books & Beyond Book Club, based on the author presentations of the Books & Beyond series sponsored by the Center for the Book, is being hosted on Facebook at www.facebook.com/booksandbeyond/. The site encourages visitors to discuss current books that have been the subject of Books & Beyond presentations at the Library.
Read.gov is supported by an advertising campaign directed by the Library’s Public Affairs Office in cooperation with the Ad Council (www.adcouncil.org/). The Ad Council is a private, nonprofit organization with a rich history of marshaling volunteer talent from the advertising and media industries to deliver critical messages to the American public.
Letters About Literature
In April 2009, six national winners in the Letters About Literature (www.lettersaboutliterature.org) contest were announced. To enter, a reader writes a personal letter to an author, living or dead, from any genre -- fiction or nonfiction, contemporary or classic -- explaining how that author's work changed the student's way of thinking about the world or himself or herself. The program is co-sponsored by the Center for the Book, the State Centers for the Book and Target, which donates $10,000 to each of the schools of the six winners and $1,000 to each of the schools of the 12 honorable mention winners. Target has agreed to continue its sponsorship for 2009-2010.
River of Words
The Center for the Book has sponsored this annual environmental poetry and art competition for students ages 5-19 for the past 14 years. In May, an awards ceremony was held in the Jefferson Building and it included River of Words (www.riverofwords.org) co-founder and former Poet Laureate Robert Hass. Children traveled to the ceremony from across the country and as far away as Sri Lanka.
Reading Promotion Partners
The center’s partnership program, which includes more than 80 national nonprofit and governmental organizations, strengthens and supports the Center for the Book’s reading and literacy projects nationwide. The Center held its annual Partners Meeting Idea Exchange Day in March 2009. Guest speakers included representatives from new partner RedRoom.com, a website for writers. Other new partners included the Literacy Council of Northern Virginia, the North Texas Future Fund and ReadKiddoRead, a project of the writer James Patterson.
State Centers
A highlight of the State Center program was the establishment of an affiliate in the U.S. Virgin Islands in June. The announcement was made in the Virgin Islands by Gov. John P. deJongh Jr. at Government House in St. Croix.
The Center for the Book now has 52 affiliates in the 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. Virgin Islands – a network that leverages the resources of the center in the Library of Congress with those of the state centers.
The Idea Exchange Day is one way that representatives from the state centers can come together to learn the novel and innovative methods that their peers use to promote reading and literacy. Participants come away with new ideas and adopt them in their own state centers.
In May, the Center for the Book hosted its annual State Center Idea Exchange Day at the Library. Coordinators from approximately 40 Center for the Book affiliates attended and discussed projects such as Letters About Literature, River of Words, the Books & Beyond author series and OneBook community reading initiatives. Partners also heard about the new Center for the Book Newsletter (www.read.gov/cfb/newsletters.html) and were asked to make contributions to this online publication.
The afternoon session included a discussion and workshop on Letters About Literature and River of Words. Cathy Gourley of LAL said that Target had agreed to fund the program once again with the same number of awards and amount of prize money. Pamela Michael of River of Words held her workshop that same day.
Boorstin Awards for innovative reading promotion efforts were also presented. The Indiana and Wisconsin state centers each received a $1,000 award, donated to the Center for the Book by Ruth Boorstin, wife of former Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin (1975-1987), who established the Center for the Book in 1977.
Publications
In January 2009, "Library: The Drama Within," with photographs by Diane Asséo Griliches and a new introduction by John Y. Cole, the director of the Center for the Book, was reprinted in an edition published by Bunker Hill Publishing.
The diverse and extraordinary black-and-white photographs range from the glorious Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress to the Biblioteca Marucelliana in Florence and the library in Sarajevo, which has since been destroyed. Each of the photographs is accompanied by an appropriate quotation, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson’s "In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends… ." or Pete Hamill’s exhortation to a passerby at the New York Public Library: "Hey, young man, hurrying by … mount those steps and enter. The world awaits you."
International
In September, the Center for the Book co-sponsored the International Literacy Day symposium at the Library.
Events
2008
OCT. 4. The Americas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature was presented to Pat Mora (author) and Rafael Lopez (illustrator) and author Laura Resau. Co-sponsored with the Hispanic Division and the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs (CLASP).
OCT. 7. Books & Beyond program with mystery bookstore owners Barbara Peters and Robert Rosenwald. Co-sponsored with Mystery Writers of America.
OCT. 16. "Ansel Adams and His Books: Photographs in Ink," a talk by American scholar Anne Hammond. Co-sponsored with the Prints and Photographs Division.
OCT. 16. Books & Beyond program. Prize-winning author and New York Times writer Timothy Egan discussed and signed three books in the "Field of Vision" series, The Photographs of Russell Lee, The Photographs of Marion Post Wolcott, and The Photographs of Ben Shahn. Edited by Amy Pastan with photographs from the Farm Security Administration, 1937‑1942. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan was also available for signing. Co-sponsored with the American Folklife Center and the Publishing Office.
OCT. 29. Books & Beyond program. Children’s literature historian Leonard Marcus discussed and signed his new book, Minders of Make Believe: Idealists, Entrepreneurs, and the Shaping of American Children’s Literature (Houghton Mifflin Co., 2008).
NOV . 3. Books & Beyond program honoring Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. Dr. Achebe discussed and signed the 50th anniversary edition of his classic book Things Fall Apart (Anchor Books, 2008). Co-sponsored with the African Section’s Africa and Middle Eastern Division and the TransAfrica Forum.
NOV. 7. Books & Beyond program. Prize-winning journalist and author Tom Gjelten discussed and signed his new book, Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause (Viking Penguin, 2008). Co-sponsored with the Library’s Hispanic Division and the Humanities and Social Sciences Division.
NOV. 18. Poetry at Noon. "Celebrating Kentucky Poets.” Kentucky State Poet Laureate Jane Gentry Vance and three Yale Series of Younger Poets Awards winners from Kentucky read from their works. Co-sponsored with the Poetry and Literature Center
2009
FEB. 9. Books & Beyond program. The Publishing Office’s Linda Osborne discussed and signed her new book, Traveling the Freedom Road: From Slavery and the Civil War Through Reconstruction (Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2009).
FEB. 20. Books & Beyond program. Anthony Pitch discussed and signed his new book, "They Have Killed Papa Dead!": The Road to Ford’s Theatre, Abraham Lincoln’s Murder and the Rage for Vengeance (Steerforth Press, 2008).
FEB. 23. A tribute to neuroscience pioneer Dr. Karl Pribram and his books.
FEB. 24. "Robert Burns at 250: Poetry, Politics & Performance." In collaboration with the Scottish Government, the American Folklife Center presented a symposium on Burns’ life and work, as well as his impact on America and American culture. The symposium was organized by the American Folklife Center in cooperation with the Center for the Book and the Poetry and Literature Center.
MARCH 17. Books & Beyond program. Bibi Gaston discussed and signed her new book, The Loveliest Woman in America: A Tragic Actress, Her Lost Diaries and Her Granddaughter’s Search For Home (HarperCollins, 2008). Co-sponsored with the Manuscript Division.
MARCH 19. National Newspaper Association Foundation luncheon.
MARCH 23. Books & Beyond program. Kirstin Downey discussed and signed her new book, The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience (Doubleday, 2009). Co-sponsored with the Manuscript Division.
APRIL 15. Books & Beyond program. Author Paul Dickson discussed and signed the third edition of The Dickson Baseball Dictionary (W.W. Norton & Co., 2009). Co-sponsored with the Humanities and Social Sciences Division.
APRIL 28. Books & Beyond program. David A. Taylor discussed and signed his new book, Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America (John Wiley & Sons, 2009). The program will included a panel discussion and excerpts from the film of the same name. Co-sponsored with the American Folklife Center.
MAY 13. River of Words awards ceremony for winners and finalists of the 2008-2009 environmental poetry and art contest for young people. Hosted by Robert Hass, U.S. Poet Laureate 1995-1997.
MAY 14. Books & Beyond program. John Hessler, Christine Johnson and Nicholas Wey Gomez participated in the Library’s international symposium "Exploring Waldseemuller’s World." Co-sponsored with the Geography and Map Division.
MAY 19. Books & Beyond program. The Publishing Office’s Ralph Eubanks discussed and signed his new book, The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South (HarperCollins, 2009).
MAY 27 . Books & Beyond program. The Publishing Office’s Margaret E. Wagner discussed and signed her new book, World War II: 365 Days (Abrams, 2009) with Thomas J. Wiener and Athena Angelos.
JUNE 2. Books & Beyond program. Baltimore Sun film critic Michael Sragow discussed and signed his new book, Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master (Knopf Publish Group, 2008). Co-sponsored with the Library’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division.
SEPT. 9. International Literacy Day program.
SEPT. 10. Jane Goodall discussed and signed her new book, Hope for Animals and Their World: How Endangered Species Are Being Rescued from the Brink (Grand Central Publishing, 2009). Co-sponsored with the Science, Technology and Business Division.
SEPT. 16. Leadership Awards program.
SEPT. 22. Writers in Schools program.
SEPT. 26 . National Book Festival
