Lewis & Clark Library One of 50 Libraries Awarded Great Stories Grant
October 19, 2015 (CHICAGO, IL) – Fifty libraries have been selected to receive training and support to host book club programs on a theme of “media, resistance and revolution” with at-risk youth, the American Library Association (ALA) Public Programs Office announced.
The 2015 grantees represent 43 public libraries, three school libraries, and four libraries located within youth detention facilities.
Created in 2006, the Great Stories Club strives to introduce young adults to accessible and thought-provoking literature selected by humanities scholars to resonate with reluctant readers struggling with complex issues like incarceration, violence, and poverty.
Working with small groups of six to ten teens, grantees will host reading and discussion events for each of three selected book titles. The theme for the current round of grants is “Hack the Feed: Media, Resistance, Revolution,” and the books are “Feed” by M.T. Anderson, “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins and “March: Books One” by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell. The book club meetings will take place between January 1 and May 30, 2016.
Grantees will receive 11 paperback copies of each of the three book selections (10 to gift to participants; one for discussion leader/library collection); travel and accommodation expenses paid for attendance at the project orientation workshop in Chicago; and other resources and support.
Lewis & Clark Library will partner with the Jan Shaw Home for Girls to provide teens the opportunity to talk about media, society, and personal responsibility; as well as a spoken word workshop, slam poetry competition, and zine-making project.
“Much of our work is helping to put young adults in the driver’s seat of their lives by providing resources, materials, people, connections, and opportunities,” said Teen Services Librarian Heather Dickerson. “If our girls leave Great Stories Club with a kernel of a new idea and the ability to talk about that idea, we’ll have found success, because that means they have connected with great literature – and their library – in a way that is meaningful and relevant to their lives.”
The grant will be administered by ALA’s Public Programs Office in partnership with the Association for Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies (ASCLA), including the Library Services for Youth in Custody and Library Services to the Incarcerated and Detained interest groups. The Great Stories Club has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Celebrating 50 Years of Excellence.
Since its creation, ALA’s Great Stories Club has reached 670 libraries in 49 states and more than 30,000 young adults (ages 12 to 21).
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