Archive for the ‘Fahrenheit 451’ Category

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From the Desk of Paulette

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

August 5, 2009
Washington, DC

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  A display from San Antonio Public Library’s Big Read of Fahrenheit 451.

Not surprisingly, I’m not the only writer that has a huge crush on Ray Bradbury. The admirably prolific Alice Hoffman recently spoke on NPR’s All Things Considered about the significant impact Bradbury has had on her writing life.

Here’s just a snippet:

I have always believed that the books of youth stay with us in a unique way. The fairy tales, nursery rhymes and novels we read when we’re young become part of our DNA. Perhaps that is why I was led back to Fahrenheit 451 after 9/11. It was a brilliant remedy for restoring my faith.

Read and/or listen to Hoffman’s paean to Fahrenheit 451 and Bradbury in its entirety on NPR’s Web site.

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FROM THE DESK OF PAULETTE

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

June 30, 2009
Washington, DC

I admit it: I have a huge crush on Ray Bradbury. Not only is he a superfan of the public library system, but I hear he’s written a classic book or two (or nearly 100 and counting!), like Fahrenheit 451, one of the four novels that helped us launch The Big Read back in 2006.

Maestro Bradbury’s on my mind for a few reasons: I recently saw a vintage episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour based on Bradbury’s short story ”The Life and Work of Juan Diaz” (Note to self: There’s a reason you don’t go to scary movies, remember?), the NEA and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs just announced that Bradbury is one of the featured authors for the 2009 Guadalajara International Book Fair, and Jennifer Steinhauer just wrote a great piece about Bradbury and his support of the Ventura County Public Libraries in the June 20 issue of The New York Times.

More than two dozen fan clubs—better known around here as Big Read projects—will be launching on Fahrenheit 451 between this September and next June. Can’t wait till then to get your Bradbury fix? Stop by The Big Read Web site to check out the great man himself in our Big Read Conversation with Ray Bradbury before heading to your local library to frontload your summer reading list with a Bradbury book or two or 100!

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WHAT PAGE ARE YOU ON?

Monday, June 8th, 2009

June 8, 2009
Washington, DC 

Just a quick shout-out in honor of the recent launch of the Big Read Web site for the Biblioteca Alexandrina, one of our Egyptian partners for The Big Read Egypt/U.S.  The site features discussion boards, the Reader’s Guides for the three Big Read classics they’re reading in Egypt as well as for The Thief and the Dogs, and snapshots from various Big Read events hosted by the library. Make sure to check out my favorite set of pix–The Big Read booth at an Alexandria mall!

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Into the Fire

Monday, May 18th, 2009

May 18, 2009
Chicago, IL

Just a tweet-length IOU of a post today from Chicago, where I’ll shortly don fireman’s garb to celebrate Columbia College’s Big Read of Fahrenheit 451. The ingenuity on display here even since my arrival 20 minutes ago is really formidable, with the “I Wanna Write Like Ray” Typewriter Olympics two weeks ago just one highlight among many.

person in a typewriter costume

And now, barely time to work in a tour of the college library before this afternoon’s parade. I thought driving Rosie the Big Read Mobile two weeks ago in St. Joseph, Missouri’s reading-themed Apple Blossom Parade was cool, but walking alongside larger-than-life puppets (bringing to life the mechanical hound from Fahrenheit 451, the children and Mr. Dark from Something Wicked This Way Comes, the female martian Ylle from The Martian Chronicles, and the central characters from The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and The Illustrated Man) is a reader’s dream straight out of Woody Allen’s great story “The Kugelmass Episode.”

To walk into a book — a treat for me, but par for the course in Chicago’s Fahrenheit Read. It’s the opposite of the novel: Instead of burned books living on in readers’ heads, the readers enter the world of the book and cavort with the characters. Somebody asked me yesterday why an Eastern-educated Westerner like me keeps coming back to the Midwest every chance I get. Days like today are the answer…

Photo by Bonnie Sebby/Columbia College Chicago

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Judith Krug, 69; Friend of Huck, Montag

Friday, April 17th, 2009

April 17, 2009
Washington, DC

If you value your right to check out a library copy of Fahrenheit 451, or Huck Finn, or Bless Me, Ultima, you owe the late Judith Krug big-time. Krug, who died Saturday, led the fight against censorship for the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom for over forty years. While there, she succeeded in consecrating the last week of every September as Banned Books Week.

I never met her, but Krug’s many battles over our right to read what we please were legend. The best tribute I’ve seen so far came in her hometown paper, the Chicago Tribune. At the height of the controversy over Madonna’s book “Sex,” they once quoted Krug as saying, “The book is sleazy trash, but it should be in every medium-sized library in the United States.”

Not just trash, mind you, but “sleazy trash.” Krug was a First-Amendment absolutist with taste. The neverending struggle for freedom of expression always needs new champions. To replace Judith Krug, it will need a country full of them.

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WHAT PAGE ARE YOU ON?

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

March 4, 2009
Washington, DC

Here’s Ray Bradbury’s biographer Sam Weller on what you see when you take a look at Bradbury’s desk.

Think seeing is believing? Check out Bradbury’s desk yourself in the new Big Read film on this library-loving writer.

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From Paulette’s Desk

Thursday, February 26th, 2009

February 26, 2009
Washington, DC

I remember how thrilling it was to learn how to cross the high-traffic Merrick Boulevard by myself when I was a second grader. (I also remember that when my mother let me cross the street by myself to go to ballet lessons, I made my teacher call her to make sure it was okay for me cross the street by myself on the way back!) Well, it turns out that “Stop, look, and listen” aren’t just good rules to follow when crossing the street. It’s also great advice for browsing the newly expanded Big Read Web site.

STOP wondering what to do with your free time. Check out The Big Read calendar to find an event taking place near you.

LOOK at the new films on Ray Bradbury and Amy Tan to get the inside track on these popular Big Read authors.

LISTEN to an excerpt from a Big Read audio guide like this one of author Richard Rodriguez talking about John Steinbeck’s rendering of California in The Grapes of Wrath.

And I’ll add a fourth “do” to the list — REPEAT!

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READ BETWEEN THE LINES

Monday, February 9th, 2009

February 8, 2009
Washington, DC

Kansas’s Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library (“TSCPL”) has been part of The Big Read family since the pilot phase. I am always impressed with the great displays the library installs in its rotunda to get everyone psyched about that year’s Big Read. Here’s how they set the scene for Their Eyes Were Watching God, Fahrenheit 451, and their latest Big Read venture To Kill a Mockingbird. (Browse Topeka’s calendar of Big Read events on The Big Read Web site.)

Entrance to the library rotunda with a display for Their Eyes Were Watching God
   

TSCPL was one of the ten brave organizations that helped the NEA to pilot The Big Read from January-June 2007. As the locale for the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic site, the library felt it was important to kick off their participation in The Big Read with a novel that would encourage reflection and conversation on the area’s racial history. As the library noted in its application, “The community is primed for expanded cultural awareness. The past year’s projects have engaged new and diverse audiences attracted by the dedication of the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site and the unveiling of a Harlem Renaissance mural honoring Topeka artist Aaron Douglas.”


Entrance to the library rotunda with sculptures of sillouette cut-outs of firemen on the walls and pretend flames in an upper window in a display for Fahrenheit 451
   

In a 2007 interview with NEA Arts, TSCPL librarian Marie Pyko talked about the library’s Big Read partnership with the local TV station: “We’ve lined up an exclusive relationship with our local CBS station. This year, WIBW Channel is a full-fledged partner. Their general manager made Fahrenheit 451 required reading for everyone at the station. [The anchors] have been encouraged to banter about the book all month long. It’s very cool. We’re going to be on TV a lot. They’re even doing the weather at the library.”


For To Kill A Mockingbird: Two women reading in an upper balcony window above the library rotunda. On the wall is a sillouette cut out of a small girl sitting on a tree limb. A long poster about the project hangs on the right
   

Here’s Marie on what’s cooking so far for this year’s Big Read “We have had great success so far.  We purchased 1000 copies of To Kill a Mockingbird and all are out in the community.  This book is really resonating with Topeka.  The silhouette image in the rotunda was contracted with a local PR firm that did the work as an in-kind gift to our project.  The design was by Sherry O’Neill from Frye-Allen, Inc and people love it.  We are getting ready for our book discussions where we are having two large discussions of Highland Park students with our regular book club group so that should be a lot of fun.”

Photos courtesy of Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library.

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ROADSHOW AND TELL

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

October 15, 2008
Washington, DC

In March and April 2008, San Antonio Public Library hosted a Big Read of To Kill a Mockingbird. Mockingbird audiobook narrator Sissy Spacek and fellow Texan Tommy Lee Jones were special guests at the foundation’s recent 25th-anniversary celebration. Jones introduced Spacek who regaled the crowd with a selection from Harper Lee’s classic. In March and April 2009, San Antonio came together to read, discuss, and celebrate Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

For more Mockingbird and Fahrenheit 451 events across the U.S., visit http://neabigread.org/events.php.

Photo courtesy of the San Antonio Public Library Foundation.

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ROADSHOW AND TELL

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

September 17, 2008
From the road

a photo blog from David Kipen’s Big Ride for The Big Read

Young boy standing underneath a food tent holding a copy of Fahrenheit 451

While his grandmother’s staff stuffs another impeccable veggie quesadilla, Patrick Camara, right, brandishes a new book from the Forsyth County Public Library’s Big Read booth next door. Photo by David Kipen.
Information plaque about Truman Capote with the ruined foundation of Truman Capote's childhood home in the background

It was only fitting that as I left the Cultural Arts Council of Douglasville’s Big Read of To Kill a Mockingbird in Georgia, I’d stop off in Monroeville, Alabama, Harper Lee’s inspiration for Maycomb. In this photo, you can see the ruined foundation of Truman Capote’s childhood home in Monroeville, Alabama. (A friend of Lee’s since childhood, by all accounts, Capote was the inspiration for Dill.) It could be worse: the land under Harper Lee’s long-since-razed house next door is now home to a drive-thru hot-wings shack. Good soft-serve, though. Photo by David Kipen.
Inside a country courthouse looking across the main floor and up to the balcony from the bench end.

Here’s the view of the “Negroes’ Gallery” from the judicial bench in the Monroeville courtroom that inspired Maycomb’s in To Kill a Mockingbird. Photo by David Kipen.

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