Big Read - Events

The Big Read is a national program to promote literacy and inspire reading and discussion. 127 communities across the nation are participating, including eight from South Dakota: Madison, Martin, Pierre, Rapid City, Ridgeview, Scotland, Sioux Falls and Spearfish. Ray Bradbury' classic science fiction novel, Fahrenheit 451, is the book chosen by the South Dakota communities for this year's Big Read. Join us for April and May events celebrating themes from the book. (Children's events in yellow)

About Fahrenheit 451
"When did science fiction first cross over from genre reading to the mainstream of American literature? Almost certainly it happened on October 19 1953, when a young Californian named Ray Bradbury published a novel with the odd title of Fahrenheit 451. In a gripping story at once disturbing and poetic, Bradbury takes the materials of pulp fiction and transforms them into a visionary parable of a society gone awry, in which firemen burn books and the state suppresses learning. Meanwhile, the citizenry sits by in a drug-induced and media-saturated indifference. More relevant than ever a half-century later, Fahrenheit 451 has achieved the rare distinction of being both a literary classic and a perennial best seller." 
       Dana Gioia - Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts

Did You Know?
	Fahrenheit 451 gets its name from the temperature at which paper burns.
	Fahrenheit 451 was written in a library. Author Ray Bradbury used a rented typewriter in the basement of a UCLA library, escaping the distractions of his two young children at home.
	If he could save only one book from a burning house, Bradbury said he would rescue a 1943 edition of Prefaces by George Bernard Shaw, because the playwright was "a fantastic man, and a huge influence on my life."
	When Ballentine published the first edition in 1953, it also produced 200 signed and numbered copies bound in Johns-Manville Quintera, a form of asbestos - which makes it one of the few books likely to survive a fire - as well as being one of the few that's actually dangerous to the health of the reader!
	Bradbury chose never to learn to drive, after witnessing a deadly car accident as a teen. He famously claims to have never driven a car in his life.

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)