#familyprogramming

Before I began work on either Thing 1 or Thing 2, I did background research on what a One Book program would look possibly look like. I reviewed several libraries’ programs, but really focused my research on two – Sarasota County and the Free Library of Philadelphia. I chose Sarasota because it is geographically proximate to Pinellas and Philadelphia because it is in its 18th year of program and they had tons of materials available to view.

I drafted a general statement about the One Book concept and a few notes that would be special if one was created in Pinellas using The Hate U Give as its book selection. The following language is some of the information I created, but ultimately did not use:

For its inaugural season, the Pinellas County Library Cooperative will be kicking off its One Book One Pinellas program on January 26, 2021, with Author Angie Thomas speaking about her book The Hate U Give at three special events at St. Petersburg’s Main Library, Clearwater’s Main Library, and Clearwater’s Countryside Branch.

The official reading period begins October 2020, with free programs and events starting in January. The Hate U Give follows 16-year-old Starr Carter as she splits time between two worlds: her wealthy preparatory school and her poor, Black neighborhood in the city. She witnesses the shooting of a childhood best friend by a police officer, which causes her worlds to collide with school friends feeling and acting in various ways about the shooting and her family and neighborhood reacting in other ways. Issues associated with shootings of this nature are realistically and honestly portrayed with heart, including racism, protests, and violence.

This acclaimed novel has several honors, including the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, Coretta Scott King Award (Author), Edgar Allen Poe Award Nominee (Mystery Writers of America), Michael L. Printz Honor Book, National Book Award Longlist, William C. Morris Award and is a #1 New York Times Bestseller.

“With smooth but powerful prose delivered in Starr’s natural, emphatic voice, finely nuanced characters, and intricate and realistic relationship dynamics, this novel will have readers rooting for Starr and opening their hearts to her friends and family. This story is necessary. This story is important.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

ALA BOOKLIST (starred review) states that The Hate U Give is “An inarguably important book that demands the widest possible readership.” Let’s add to the growing number of people who have read this book and join the conversation.

The Christian Science Monitor states, “If The Hate U Give makes you uncomfortable, that’s because it should.” As individuals part of a greater society, we have to be willing to make choices that are inconvenient and uncomfortable for ourselves to make the world a better place.

This drafting helped me get a feel for my rationale in choosing the book and the type of programming I would design based on it. I knew I did not want to design a general flyer, however. Instead, I focused my creativity on what programming would look like for families with kids younger than eighth grade, which is the suggested minimum reading level. I carefully selected two books that pair well with The Hate U Give - Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness by Anastasia Higginbotham for older elementary and middle school readers and The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by Rafael López for younger elementary readers. I think both books allow for a beginning understanding of themes of racism and making space for people who are like you and different from you.

Once I selected those two books, creating programming categories became easy. I decided on six to showcase in a family guide: community dinners, museum visits, neighborhood walking tours, storytimes, workshops, and movies. I picked a range of events from large community collaborative gatherings to smaller, branch library activities. My ideas were generated using Philadelphia’s programming as a starting point and then recognizing Pinellas’ strengths and incorporating them into my project.

After planning, I decided to create my guide using Microsoft Word’s Brochure Template. I kept the same colors for text and background as my poster so patrons would know these were part of the same program series. On page 1, I introduced One Book, provided its accompanying website address (fictional), and drafted a couple of introductory paragraphs for its Family Programs and Event Guide. This involved a general description of all three books in the program, pictures of their book covers, and intended audiences for the books.

I broke down the six programming categories into two groups for ease of use – featured family events and community family events. If this was a real program, I would have hyperlinked the events to their respective libraries and likely included date and location information for each event. For the workshop activities, I tried to think about what kids would like to do that was grounded in The Hate U Give; I especially liked Philadelphia’s Community Flag Making Workshop idea so I adopted it. I searched for family movies with authentic portrayals of racism and included some those titles.

Because of my interest in creating a program such as this, finding pertinent information to use and writing about it was not difficult. Locating pictures allowed by being in the public domain or using a creative commons license was hard. The generic pictures for community dinner, storytimes, workshops, and movies were found via Flickr’s creative commons search. The museum events and neighborhood walking tour pictures were from the Florida Holocaust Museum and St. Petersburg promotional materials. If they were to be used in library materials all six photos would need to be attributed to their photographers and the professional ones would need to be officially vetted. The use of the book covers in the Guide would require pre-authorization by the publishers, authors, and illustrators, which the PPLC would obtain before creating a program such as this. I would also think that the PPLC would hire a professional photographer to take pictures or they would have their own cache of photographs to use in a countywide program.