Giving the Gift of Reading: Berkley Librarian to Take Part in Giveaway
(Crystal A. Proxmire, April 20, 2014)
Two things that Berkley Library Director Matt Church loves: reading and backpacking. Those interests merge beautifully in the book “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed, and thanks to a program by World Book Night, he’ll be sharing these interests with random people in Berkley on April 23.
The World Book Night giveaway is an effort to introduce reading to people who are not already active booklovers. Taking place on Shakespeare’s birthday, World Book Night gives half a million books away, in 6,000 cities throughout the country. Church applied to have Berkley be one of the locations.
“I selected “Wild” because it tells the story of long-distance backpacking and because it’s an experience I hold close to my heart. I’ve hiked 800 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail and 1,200 miles on the Appalachian Trail,” Church said. “Long-distance backpacking is a feat and deeply rewarding. I plan to give a talk about long-distance backpacking at the library around the time the movie version of “Wild,” starring Reese Witherspoon, is released later this year.”
Church will give 20 copies of the book away as he treks through Berkley that afternoon. He’s taking the adventure to the streets, and away from the library, because the goal is to reach new readers, not existing ones.
The program started in 2012 and has grown every year since. Each year, 30- 35 books are chosen by an independent panel of librarians and booksellers. The authors of the books waive their royalties and the publishers agree to pay the costs of producing the specially-printed World Book Night U.S. editions. Then volunteers apply to be one of the selected distributors.
“I’m thrilled to bring World Book Night to Berkley and look forward to getting copies of this book into the hands of community members,” Church said.
Regular readers are excluded, and there’s no telling where the day will take him. What is certain though, is that Church will have some good conversations about the love of reading, and hopefully get some new people hooked.
For more on World Book Night visit their website at http://www.us.worldbooknight.org.
For more on the Berkley Public Library visit http://www.berkley.lib.mi.us/index.shtml.