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Big Read - Frequently Asked Questions
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What is The Big Read? |
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The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The program provides citizens with the opportunity to read and discuss a single book within their communities. Big Read grantees comprise a variety of organizations including libraries, municipalities, colleges, and arts, culture, and science organizations.
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Why has this program been organized? |
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The Big Read was created in response to the National Endowment for the Arts report Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, which identified a critical decline in literary reading among American adults. With communities across the country as partners and by awarding grants and by improving access to the art of literature, the Arts Endowment is working toward reversing the decline in reading. |
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How was Rapid City selected to participate in the Big Read? |
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Rapid City is one of 127 communities participating in the Big Read from January to June of 2008. By the end of 2008, approximately 400 communities will have participated in the Big Read since the program's launch in 2006. Community organizations are selected by a panel of experts based on each organization's experience in building strong local partnerships, reaching and engaging new and diverse audiences, working with educators, involving local and state public officials, working with media, and excellence of plans to develop and implement a community-wide reading program. |
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Why should I participate? |
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We lead busy lives these days with many competing demands on our time and attention. We hope that people will use the Big Read as an opportunity to discover, or re-discover, that reading is an activity that is both relaxing and stimulating, and always worthwhile. And while reading may be a private activity, the events of the Big Read make it a social activity as well. Find out how much fun a book can be when everyone in a community is reading it! |
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Quote from Ray Bradbury:
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture.
Just get people to stop reading them.
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The BIG READ is an initiative of the National Endowment of the Arts (see www.neabigread.org) in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Arts Midwest. The South Dakota Big Read is sponsored
by the South Dakota Humanities Council's Center for the Book (http://sdhc.sdstate.org/center.html)
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Born Ray Douglas Bradbury on August 22, 1920. Began writing science fiction as a child |
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Joined "Los Angeles Science Fiction Society" in 1936, a group that includes Robert Heinlein, Leigh Brackett, and L. Ron Hubbard. |
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Read a brief Ray Bradbury biography at his website |
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Among Bradbury's works (30 novels and over 600 short stories) are such classics as:
The Illustrated Man
Something Wicked This Way
Comes
The Martian Chronicles
The October Country
Dandelion Wine |
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A recipient of many awards and citations throughout his life, he was awarded National Medal of Arts in 2004, the highest award given to artists and art patrons by the United States government |
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