March is Read Across America Month, and to mark the occasion Literacy Mid-South is kicking things off with a special event at The Booksellers at Laurelwood on Friday, March 1st.
Literacy Mid-South’s 2013 “Book of Choice” for Read Across America is Wonder (Knopf Books for Young Readers) by R.J. Palacio. It’s a novel about a fifth-grader coming to terms with a facial deformity. But it’s a story about how that boy’s family, his classmates, and the larger community come to terms with it as well.
The book, published a year ago, is plenty special. It’s for readers 8 and up (that includes adults), and it’s been praised by every name in the book, including The New York Times, School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, the Huffington Post, Slate, The Wall Street Journal, and Entertainment Weekly. Literacy Mid-South is on board too. Executive director Kevin Dean and his staff have chosen Wonder for its lesson in kindness and its call against bullying.
