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Vermont Reads |
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“Sharing Our Past — Shaping Our Future” Since 1974 |
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Office in Montpelier
11 Loomis Street, Montpelier, Vermont 05602 802.262.2626 Fax: 802.262.2620 E-mail: info@vermonthumanities.org |
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Welcome to Vermont Reads
In 2010, Vermont Reads will explore Katherine Paterson’s novel, The Day of the Pelican, which tells the life-affirming story of the Lleshi family, Albanians living in Kosovo in the mid-1990s as Kosovo was trying to fight off Serbian oppressors. Suddenly the Lleshis are homeless refugees. They find their courage tested by hunger, illness, a long, arduous journey, and danger.
The Day of the Pelican, Paterson’s newest book (published October 2009), recounts the story of a family suddenly turned into refugees, and the trials of life in a war-ravaged world. It traces their journey as refugees after they are brought to America by a church group and begin a new life in Barre, Vermont. In this story of some of the newest of Americans are echoes of the stories of many earlier American immigrant families, and the struggle to remain a family in the face of clashing cultures and changing worlds.
Each year about sixty Vermont towns from around the state get involved with Vermont Reads. Be sure your town takes part in this community-wide project.
Schools, libraries, and other nonprofit organizations may apply. Partnerships with organizations and businesses are encouraged. Communities receive free books as well as resources and publicity materials.
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Vermont Reads 2010 |
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A Statewide, One-Book Community Reading Program |
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UNDERWRITER |
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MEDIA SPONSOR |
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With support from the Jack & Dorothy Byrne Foundation |
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“One day, to her own surprise, she realized that she was no longer thinking of going back home to Kosovo. Not because she thought America was a perfect country. If it were a perfect country, Baba would have a good job by now, and Mama wouldn’t have to clean motel rooms. Being Muslim or Christian or Jewish or nothing at all wouldn’t matter, and the president wouldn’t be talking about going to war in yet another Muslim land. Perhaps, though, there were no perfect countries. America was their new beginning . . .”
– Meli Lleshi, eleven-year-old Albanian girl who arrives in Vermont from Kosovo, The Day of the Pelican |
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The Day of the Pelican
by Katherine Paterson |
