Vermont Reads Suggested Activities

Organize your own book series or Story Hour

View our list of related books and resources. This includes picture books that could be part of a Story Hour.

Related Books and Resources

Host a Guest Speaker or Panel Discussion

Speakers Bureau

Our Speakers Bureau provides informative and thought-provoking presentations by scholars and experts on diverse humanities topics. These rich experiences are accessible for Vermont non-profit organizations to present in their community for a small fee.

We are offering each Vermont Reads host organization up to three free Speakers Bureau talks related to the themes in Gather. Please note that the limit of three Speakers Bureau presentations per organization per year still remains.

More about Vermont Reads Speakers Bureau Bookings

Organize your own speaker or panel presentation

Some topics you could consider exploring include:

• Foraging, Hunting, and/or Fishing
• Housing & Food Insecurity
• Substance Use Disorder and Recovery

Other resources for potential speakers:

• Request a presentation by Hunger Free Vermont: https://www.hungerfreevt.org/hunger-101
• Webinar with VermontFEED: https://vtfeed.org/news/leveraging-federal-state-funding-innovations-farm-early-childhood
• Host virtual viewings of Vermont Humanities Snapshot talks that connect to the book

For funding support to cover honoraria, consider applying for a Vermont Humanities Rapid Response grant.

More about Vermont Reads Grant Opportunities

Film Screenings

Just Getting By

Just Getting By, a new documentary film by Bess O’Brien, is a sweeping and yet intimate look at the lives of Vermonters who are struggling with food and housing insecurity.

Apply for a Vermont Humanities Rapid Response grant to fund a screening of Just Getting By. If your grant application is approved, we’ll ask you to contact the filmmaker Bess O’Brien to schedule the screening and arrange for payment. Vermont Humanities will provide up to $500 for the screening, but your organization will be required to pay Bess directly.

You can email Bess at bobrien@pshift.com, or contact Kingdom Country Productions at: https://kingdomcounty.org/contact-us-index, to arrange the screening.

More about Vermont Reads Grant Opportunities

Underdog

Underdog is the curiously optimistic tale of Doug Butler—a hardscrabble Vermont dairy farmer who risks losing the only home he’s ever known to chase his dreams of dog mushing in Alaska.

Apply for a Vermont Humanities Rapid Response grant to fund a screening of Underdog. If your grant application is approved, we’ll ask you to contact the film team to schedule the screening and arrange for payment. Vermont Humanities will provide up to $500 for the screening, but your organization will be required to pay the filmmakers directly.

For screenings or digital viewing opportunities contact kinsey@nicemarmotfilms.com or fill out their screening request form.

Other Titles

These are available on Kanopy or other streaming services:

• The American Farm (2019)
• A Place at the Table (2013)
• Ben is Back (2018)
• Foster (2019)
• Fresh (2009)
• The Hungry Heart (2020) another film by Bess O’Brien highlights the often-hidden world of prescription drug addiction through the world of Vermont Pediatrician Dr. Fred Holmes who works with patients struggling with this disease.
• Life Love Dogs (2016)
• Megan Leavey (2017)
• Northern Borders (2013)
• Nova: Addiction (2018)
• PBS Facing Eviction (2022)
• Peter and the Farm (2016)
• Time Traveler (2018)
• White God (2015)

Host an Exhibit

Voices of Home

Voices of Home is an audio-visual storytelling project launched in 2015 by Corrine Yonce when she served as an Americorps VISTA volunteer with the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition. This exhibit brings together work from two of Yonce’s collaborative efforts, Voices of South Burlington Community Housing and Voices of Decker Towers.

Yonce envisioned Voices of Home as a way to “erase the stigma surrounding affordable housing communities and educate our friends and neighbors about the importance of a stable, reasonably priced home in helping people lead fulfilling lives.”

Through the project she interviewed residents in a number of Vermont affordable housing communities, engaged with them through their stories, and learned how having affordable homes impacted their lives. She recorded those conversations and subsequently paired the recordings with painted portraits of each interviewee.

How to book Voices of Home

• Contact Vermont Folklife to determine availability of the Voices of Home exhibit at (802) 388-4964 or info@vtfolklife.org.
• Consider applying for a Vermont Reads-related Rapid Response grant from Vermont Humanities. More about Vermont Reads Grant Opportunities.

Museum Field Trips

Museum on Main Street

Vermont Humanities and New Hampshire Humanities are bringing the Smithsonian’s Museum on Main Street’s travelling exhibit, Crossroads: Change in Rural America, to small towns in New Hampshire and Vermont from August 2024 to September 2025.

Crossroads offers small towns a chance to look at their own paths to highlight the changes that affected their fortunes over the past century. The exhibition will prompt discussions about what happened when America’s rural population became a minority of the country’s population and the ripple effects that occurred.

Each council will support three host sites in their respective states; each location will host the exhibit for six weeks. Vermont exhibit sites include:

• The St Albans Museum (August 23 to October 6, 2024)
• The Chandler Center for the Arts in Randolph (February/March 2025)
• The Old Stone House Museum in Brownington (August/September 2025)

Contact us at community@vermonthumanities.org for more information about the Crossroads exhibit.

Visit a Nature Museum

• ECHO, Leahy Center for Lake Champlain – Burlington
• Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park – Woodstock
• The Montshire Museum of Science – Norwich
• The Nature Museum – Grafton
• Southern Vermont Natural History Museum – Marlboro
• VINS Nature Center – Hartford

For funding support to cover field trips, consider applying for a Vermont Humanities Rapid Response grant.

More about Vermont Reads Grant Opportunities

Arts, Crafts & STEM Activities

• Foraged Art: Collect twigs, pebbles, acorns, floral and fauna to create artistic displays. View an example from the Library of Congress’ Blog.
• Host a community art exhibition or photo contest. It can center on one of the themes from Gather, such as rural life, addiction and recovery, our powerful connection to our pets, housing and food insecurity, or resiliency.
• Mechanical Engineering Activities with Kids: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/stem-activities/subjects/mechanical-engineering
• Pet portraits: paint, draw, or take photographs of your beloved companions.

Get Outside

• Foraging: Forage and identify native flora and fauna. If you forage for edible vegetation or mushrooms, be sure to confirm identification with a professional before consuming, as many species are poisonous to humans! Please read Sustainable Harvesting of Wild Plants by Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife.
• Organize a community dog walk
• Organize a fishing day for youth and licensed adults.
• Take a hike!
• Visit a State Park or participate in a Nature Program: https://www.vtstateparks.com/events-programs.html

Community Action

• Support a local food shelf by organizing a local food drive, donating, or volunteering. The Vermont Foodbank is the state’s largest hunger-relief organization. Its website has a great locator to find local food banks.
• Support local animals
  • Host an animal food and necessities drive for a local animal shelter or food shelf
  • Volunteer at a local animal shelter
  • Work to highlight local pets looking for their forever homes
• Volunteer at a recovery organization. Recovery Partners of Vermont has opportunities at regional recovery organizations to volunteer. For more information visit: https://vtrecoverynetwork.org/get-involved/volunteer/