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Reminder: ReadDavidson 2022

by | Jan 5, 2022

ReadDavidson is a town-wide initiative organized by a group of avid readers, Main Street Books, the Davidson Public Library, and the Town of Davidson. Since 2007, books have been chosen annually, and book-related events have been planned to make each book come to life. Each year, Davidson residents are invited to participate in programs and events.

For the second time in a row, the ReadDavidson Committee chose FOUR books so that readers of all ages could get involved!  Events will highlight each of these four selections with the aim of stimulating common conversation among friends, families, and community members.

How to participate – Read (and support your local bookstore at the same time)

Main Street Books is offering a 10% discount on each 2022 ReadDavidson title.

Donate – Main Street Books is joining up with the Davidson Parks & Recreation Department to provide donated books to local families with demonstrated need as well as area schools. To donate a title (or titles), click HERE and then enter the code RD22DONATION at checkout. Many thanks for your support in helping as many readers as possible participate in ReadDavidson 2022.

Apply for a Book Grant – So that everyone in the community might participate in this program, the Davidson Parks & Recreation Department, Main Street Books, and local supporters have teamed up to create the Book Grant Program. Need a book? Apply here.

Attend – 2022 events will be scheduled for April in conjunction with the town’s annual “April is for Arts” initiative. The ReadDavidson committee is hoping to host in-person events this year; however, that will be dependent on current COVID-19 best practices. Watch for more information as events are scheduled!

Adult/Fiction:

Infinite Country by Patricia Engel
ISBN: 9781982159474

Book description:
I often wonder if we are living the wrong life in the wrong country.

Talia is being held at a correctional facility for adolescent girls in the forested mountains of Colombia after committing an impulsive act of violence that may or may not have been warranted. She urgently needs to get out and get back home to Bogotá, where her father and a plane ticket to the United States are waiting for her. If she misses her flight, she might also miss her chance to finally be reunited with her family.

How this family came to occupy two different countries, two different worlds, comes into focus like twists of a kaleidoscope. We see Talia’s parents, Mauro and Elena, fall in love in a market stall as teenagers against a backdrop of civil war and social unrest. We see them leave Bogotá with their firstborn, Karina, in pursuit of safety and opportunity in the United States on a temporary visa, and we see the births of two more children, Nando and Talia, on American soil. We witness the decisions and indecisions that lead to Mauro’s deportation and the family’s splintering—the costs they’ve all been living with ever since.

Award-winning, internationally acclaimed author Patricia Engel, herself a dual citizen and the daughter of Colombian immigrants, gives voice to all five family members as they navigate the particulars of their respective circumstances. Rich with Bogotá urban life, steeped in Andean myth, and tense with the daily reality of the undocumented in America, Infinite Country “is as much an all-American story as it is a global one” (Booklist, starred review).

Young Adult/Fiction:

What Makes Us by Rafi Mittlefehldt
ISBN: 9781536219050

Book description:
A viral video reveals a teen’s dark family history, leaving him to reckon with his heritage, legacy, and identity in this fiery, conversation-starting novel.

Eran Sharon knows nothing of his father except that he left when Eran was a baby. Now a senior in high school and living with his protective but tight-lipped mother, Eran is a passionate young man deeply interested in social justice and equality. When he learns that the Houston police have launched a program to increase traffic stops, Eran organizes a peaceful protest. But a heated moment at the protest goes viral, and a reporter connects the Sharon family to a tragedy fifteen years earlier — and asks if Eran is anything like his father, a supposed terrorist. Soon enough, Eran is wondering the same thing, especially when the people he’s gone to school and temple with for years start to look at him differently. Timely, powerful, and full of nuance, Rafi Mittlefehldt’s sophomore novel confronts the prejudices, fears, and strengths of family and community, striking right to the heart of what makes us who we are.

Middle Grades/Non-Fiction, graphic novel:

When Stars Are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohammed
ISBN: 9780525553908

Book description:
A National Book Award Finalist, this remarkable graphic novel is about growing up in a refugee camp, as told by a former Somali refugee to the Newbery Honor-winning creator of Roller Girl.

Omar and his younger brother, Hassan, have spent most of their lives in Dadaab, a refugee camp in Kenya. Life is hard there: never enough food, achingly dull, and without access to the medical care Omar knows his nonverbal brother needs. So when Omar has the opportunity to go to school, he knows it might be a chance to change their future . . . but it would also mean leaving his brother, the only family member he has left, every day.

Heartbreak, hope, and gentle humor exist together in this graphic novel about a childhood spent waiting, and a young man who is able to create a sense of family and home in the most difficult of settings. It’s an intimate, important, unforgettable look at the day-to-day life of a refugee, as told to New York Times Bestselling author/artist Victoria Jamieson by Omar Mohamed, the Somali man who lived the story.

Children’s Picture book:

Story Boat by Kyo Maclear, Illustrated by Rashin Kheiriyeh
ISBN: 9780735263598

Book description:
When you have to leave behind almost everything you know, where can you call home? Sometimes home is simply where we are: here. An imaginative, lyrical, unforgettable picture book about the migrant experience through a child’s eyes.

When a little girl and her younger brother are forced along with their family to flee the home they’ve always known, they must learn to make a new home for themselves — wherever they are. And sometimes the smallest things — a cup, a blanket, a lamp, a flower, a story — can become a port of hope in a terrible storm. As the refugees travel onward toward an uncertain future, they are buoyed up by their hopes, dreams and the stories they tell — a story that will carry them perpetually forward.

This timely, sensitively told story, written by multiple award–winner Kyo Maclear and illustrated by Sendak Fellowship recipient Rashin Kheiriyeh, introduces very young readers in a gentle, non-frightening and ultimately hopeful way to the current refugee crisis.

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