Rantoul Public Library

This year, we're doing our Summer Reading Bingo a liiiitle differently! Our Bingo card has been modified to discourage any reading outside of school and to promote something else. Take a peek at the Bingo and don't forget to pick up your packet in person!

R.F. Kuang’s genre-bending fiction broaches ordinarily serious topics from a satirical and fantastical perspective. Academic yet approachable, Kuang’s work combines history, magic, and classical literary tradition to render powerful critiques of academia, the publishing industry, and even contemporary popular culture. Her most recent novel, Katabasis, follows two graduate students as they descend into hell after the death of their professor, and the screen rights options to the novel were sold to Amazon MGM Studios for an upcoming TV series before its publication. Kuang’s other bestselling titles include Yellowface, Babel, and The Poppy War trilogy, and she is the recipient of the Nebula Award for Best Novel, the Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Fiction, and the American Book Award. Kelly Jensen, anti-censorship advocate, Senior Editor at Book Riot, and writer who has compiled such anthologies as Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World and (Don’t) Call Me Crazy, will be joining Kuang in conversation.

Patrons of the Rantoul Public Library, and all ILP-member libraries, are invited to register for this online event featuring R. F. Kuang! On Thursday May 20th at 7PM, the author will join us for a discussion over Zoom, including answering questions submitted by "attendees." If you can't make it live, register and you will be sent a link to the recording that will be accessible for 30 days after the 20th. Registration closes at 5PM (CT) on the 20th, so don't wait—register here! This will be the last event of Season 5, but we'll be back in September with another fantastic set of guests!

This event is made possible by Illinois Libraries Present (ILP), a statewide collaboration among public libraries offering premier events. ILP is funded in part by a grant awarded by the Illinois State Library, a department of the Office of the Secretary of State, using funds provided by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). 

ILP is committed to inclusion and accessibility. American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and Closed Captioning are provided for all events by default—no special request needed.

This is the first month our book club members have been able to vote on, and we're pleased to be reading Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty this month!

This locked-door murder mystery in space follows six ex-con clones piloting a ship full of sleeping humans headed for a new planet. When the crew wakes up in newly-cloned bodies with no memories of the last twenty-five years and their old bodies floating around, they must figure out which of them killed everyone and sabotaged the mission—before the killer remembers who they are.

The book club will meet Tuesday, May 26th at 6PM (a slightly abnormal date due to the holiday) and even if you can't make it to the meeting, you can still read along with us! There are 9 physical copies of Six Wakes in our system and 3 ebook copies through Libby, so if your library is part of the Illinois Heartland Library System, you have access to the same books on our book club list.

For those who are able to attend our meeting, we will be choosing our June read toward the end, and you can also suggest books for the list. Happy reading, and we hope to see you on the 26th!

The Booker Prize Reading Guide to The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Author Interview: “The state will come after the defenceless”

Prasanna Puwanarajah reads an extract from The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Author Interview: “Sri Lankans specialise in gallows humor”

Shehan Karunatilaka answers questions about The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Author Interview with The Federal

Shehan Karunatilaka wins the Booker Prize 2022 for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Join critically acclaimed, bestselling author, Cristina Henríquez, for a compelling conversation about her work. Henríquez’s newest book, The Great Divide, is a moving exploration of the people who lived, loved, and labored during the construction of the Panama Canal. Named a New York Times’ Editors’ Choice selection and TIME Magazine “100 Must-Read Books of 2024,” The Great Divide explores history and adversity in a place very special to her – her father’s homeland of Panama. Henríquez has also authored The Book of Unknown Americans, The World in Half, and Come Together, Fall Apart, all to significant acclaim. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Best American Short Stories 2018, and she is a recipient of the 21st Century Award given by The Chicago Public Library Foundation. She is a graduate of Northwestern University and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and lives in the Chicago suburbs with her family. Carmen Álvarez will join Henríquez as moderator. Álvarez is an advocate for libraries and Latinx representation in the publishing industry. Her work has appeared in Glamour, Elle, and Vogue and she has a social media presence surpassing 180k followers across platforms.

Patrons of the Rantoul Public Library, and all ILP-member libraries, are invited to register for this online event featuring Cristina Henríquez! On Thursday April 16th at 7PM, the author will join us for a discussion over Zoom, including answering questions submitted by "attendees." If you can't make it live, register and you will be sent a link to the recording that will be accessible for 30 days after the 16th. Registration closes at 5PM (CT) on the 16th, so don't wait—register here, and check back for next month's ILP guest!

This event is made possible by Illinois Libraries Present (ILP), a statewide collaboration among public libraries offering premier events. ILP is funded in part by a grant awarded by the Illinois State Library, a department of the Office of the Secretary of State, using funds provided by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). 

ILP is committed to inclusion and accessibility. American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and Closed Captioning are provided for all events by default—no special request needed.

Here at the Rantoul Public Library, we'll be celebrating in a lot of different ways! We have Open Mic Night Afternoon on Saturday the 18th, and any poets in the area are more than welcome to come (and poetry-enjoyers can listen, too)!

As the second and last pre-selected book, we're excited to announce that the April 2026 book is 2022 Booker Prize winner The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka!

The book follows the titular Maali Almeida, who is a war photographer covering the Sri Lankan civil until his assassination in 1990. Maali is given seven moons to, as a ghost, figure out who murdered him and to guide those closest to him to the photos he took that led to his death.

The book club will meet Monday, April 27th at 6PM, and even if you can't make it to the meeting, you can still read along with us! There are 11 physical copies of The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida in our system, so if your library is part of the Illinois Heartland Library System, you have access to the same books on our book club list.

What final boss actually broke you?

Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.

Name a video game song you still have stuck in your head.

Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.

What games have opened doors for you in real life?

Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.

If you missed out on our March book club book, "Women Warriors: An Unexpected History" by Pamela D. Toler—or if you just want to keep the conversation going—here are some links to tide you over!

Toler on The American Scholar, "Daughters of War"

Toler on The Dead Prussian Podcast, "On Women Warriors"

Toler on the What's Her Name Podcast, "The Rani of Jhansi, Lakshmi Bai" and "The Warrior Zenobia"

Toler on Gal's Guide, "Women's Battalion of Death"

Toler on History On the Net, "Women Warriors: How Females Have Fought in Combat Since History's Beginning"

Industrious, irreverent, humble–though he may deny the accusation–Percival Everett, like his fiction, defies categorization. His most recent novel, James, earned both the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the National Book Award, and his 2001 novel Erasure inspired the film American Fiction, which received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2024. Everett’s other titles include Dr. No, The Trees (finalist for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction), Telephone (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), So Much Blue, and I Am Not Sidney Poitier. Despite these accomplishments, he remains devoted to reviewing his own work critically, and indeed his writing process involves intensive research and revision. Tune in for our conversation with Percival Everett to get a glimpse beyond the page.  Brandis Friedman will moderate the event. Friedman is a writer and anchor for WTTW’s "Chicago Tonight and Chicago Tonight: Black Voices," and also serves as a champion for libraries.

Patrons of the Rantoul Public Library, and all ILP-member libraries, are invited to register for this online event featuring Percival Everett! On Thursday March 19th at 7PM, the award-winning author will join us for a discussion over Zoom, including answering questions submitted by "attendees." If you can't make it live, register and you will be sent a link to the recording that will be accessible for 30 days after the 19th. Registration closes at 5PM (CT) on the 19th, so don't wait—register here, and check back for next month's ILP guest!

This event is made possible by Illinois Libraries Present (ILP), a statewide collaboration among public libraries offering premier events. ILP is funded in part by a grant awarded by the Illinois State Library, a department of the Office of the Secretary of State, using funds provided by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). 

ILP is committed to inclusion and accessibility. American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and Closed Captioning are provided for all events by default—no special request needed.