Introduction
 Dear Friends,
On behalf of the City of Austin, I would like to invite you to participate in the seventh annual Mayor’s Book Club and Keep Austin Reading program presented by the Austin Public Library. The Mayor’s Book Club is designed to bring readers from throughout our community together to create a citywide book club. This year, we have selected A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. We invite all of Austin to read the book over the next few months, and in April we ask you to join together and discuss the book at your local library. The University of Texas Humanities Institute will unite with the Austin Public Library, for the seventh consecutive year, to assist with the discussion groups and activities about the book. We will host the author in a special event on Friday, April 25, at 6 p.m. at City Hall.
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is an incredible account of Sierra Leone’s civil war and the accompanying epidemic of child soldiers. As the world’s attention shifts towards alleviating issues within the African continent, the selection of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier posits Austin in a local dialogue extending globally. Beah’s work stands out due to his unique role: child soldier turned memoirist turned children’s rights advocate. The reader is powerfully reminded that the author is not merely reporting horrors, but describing the horrors that he survived. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is an important—and needed—contribution to the discussion of war and child exploitation. Encapsulating hardship, toil, and eventual success, Beah combines the dire with the motivating. He survived, graduated from Oberlin College, and has funneled his horrific experience into a passionate advocacy for children throughout the world.
The book is available at all Library locations and area bookstores.
Please join one of the many book discussions and special programs planned at our local public libraries in April. The Keep Austin Reading program will culminate with a free public program with the author on Friday, April 25, at City Hall. Please join me in reading this year’s book selection!
Thank you for participating in the Mayor’s Book Club and our Keep Austin Reading program.
Regards,
Will Wynn
Mayor
Visit our previous Mayor's Book Club resource guides online:
Spring 2007: Around The Bloc by Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Spring 2006: The Devil's Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea
Spring 2005: Writing Austin's Lives by Metro Austin Residents
Spring 2004: All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Spring 2003: Holes by Louis Sachar
Spring 2002: Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
To view what other cities across the country are reading visit
The Center for the Book |
