For the first time since it was launched in 2003, this year’s community reading selection features a local author. On Tuesday, February 7, U-M social work prof Luke Shaefer and co-author (and Johns Hopkins prof) Kathryn Edin will discuss $2.00 A Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America (see Events). The talk should draw 300-400 people to the U-M’s Rackham Auditorium.
Other discussions of the book, and of local poverty, are scheduled throughout the month at libraries in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and–for the first time this year–Chelsea, Dexter, and Saline (see aareads.aadl.org/aareads/events). Until last year, Chelsea and Dexter took part in another reading program sponsored by the 5 Healthy Towns Foundation; when that grant ended, explains Dexter librarian Paul McCann, “We reached out to Tim and Josie”–Ann Arbor District Library director Josie Parker and community relations head Tim Grimes, who organized what at the time was called Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti Reads. The reading programs came together, libraries in Milan, Northfield, and Saline signed on, and Washtenaw Reads was born.
Originally launched by U-M faculty, the community read “is the ultimate book group,” emails U-M librarian Molly Mahony, who co-chairs the sixteen-member screening committee. After reading and discussing as many as fifty books over the summer, they narrow the choice to two titles, typically serious, issue-oriented reads (this year’s alternate was Orhan’s Inheritance by Aline Ohanesian, a novel that deals with the Armenian genocide). A small committee of non-librarians makes the final selection, which is announced in the fall to give people enough time to read it before the big winter events.
$2.00 a Day is an up-close look at appalling poverty in both rural and urban America. “People are very interested in it,” Dexter’s McCann says. “We’ve given out almost 100 copies.” (Participating libraries decide how to make the books available; Dexter gives them away, but in Ann Arbor, you check them out like you would any library book.)
After the read is over, Grimes says, the AADL gives away almost all its copies to local high schools–where, it is hoped, teachers will incorporate them into the curriculum.
