January 1, 2023
By Hope Schmidt
Pickerington Public Library is kicking off 2024 with a bang as they celebrate being one of 62 organizations chosen by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to participate in the 2024 Big Read event.
“The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is proud to support the nation’s arts sector with grant opportunities so that together we can help everyone live more artful lives.” stated the NEA.
The NEA awards grants to organizations that support the creation, presentation and consumption of art.
Pickerington Public Library will launch the program on January 19. The event kicks off at 4:00 pm, when the public is invited to choose one free book from the four titles selected for the 2024 Big Read. The selections are Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body by Rebekah Taussig, The Degenerates by J. Albert Mann, Wink by Rob Harrell and Just Ask!: Be Different, Be Brave, Be You by Sonia Sotomayo. (See below for synopsizes)
At 4:30 pm, the nonprofit Dreams on Horseback will provide a presentation. The organization enriches lives through a plethora of equine programs including therapeutic riding, military connections, assisted learning and an Alzhimer’s sensory experience. At 5:00 pm, library visitors will meet some of the miniature therapy horses.
If you cannot make the Kickoff Event, free books can be picked up at both library locations through the April 6th Finale Celebration while supplies last. The library has 850 copies to give away.
Additional Big Read Events:
January – March
Pickerington Book Clubs will participate including book clubs at local assisted living partnerships
March 3 – “Wonder” Movie (PG)
1:30 – 4:30 PM
Movie showing, discussion and activities at Pickerington Main and Sycamore Plaza
March 9 – Art Day at the Library
12:00 – 1:00 PM
Ceramic ornament art-to-go kits with Art & Clay on Main
1:00 – 2:30 PM
“Possibility Talks” 30-minute presentation followed by 1-hour workshop with Art Possible Ohio.
March 15 – “Five Feet Apart” Movie (PG-13)
3:00 – 5:45 PM
Movie showing, discussion and activities at Pickerington Main and Sycamore Plaza
April 6 – Finale Celebration
10:00 AM – 2:00 PM
Sponsor booths, American Sign Language classes, crafts, writing workshops, community discussions, and more! Guest speakers including Rob Harrell, author of “Wink.”
Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling.
Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn’t fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life.
The Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded is not a happy place. The young women who are already there certainly don’t think so. Not Maxine, who is doing everything she can to protect her younger sister Rose in an institution where vicious attendants and bullying older girls treat them as the morons, imbeciles, and idiots the doctors have deemed them to be. Not Alice, either, who was left there when her brother couldn’t bring himself to support a sister with a club foot. And not London, who has just been dragged there from the best foster situation she’s ever had, thanks to one unexpected, life-altering moment. Each girl is determined to change her fate, no matter what it takes.
Ross Maloy just wants to be a normal seventh grader. He doesn’t want to lose his hair, or wear a weird hat, or deal with the disappearing friends who don’t know what to say to “the cancer kid.” But with his recent diagnosis of a rare eye cancer, blending in is off the table.
Based on Rob Harrell’s real-life experience, and packed with comic panels and spot art, this incredibly personal and poignant novel is an unforgettable, heartbreaking, hilarious, and uplifting story of survival and finding the music, magic, and laughter in life’s weirdness.
.
In Just Ask, United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor celebrates the different abilities kids (and people of all ages) have. Using her own experience as a child who was diagnosed with diabetes, Justice Sotomayor writes about children with all sorts of challenges–and looks at the special powers those kids have as well. As the kids work together to build a community garden, asking questions of each other along the way, this book encourages readers to do the same: When we come across someone who is different from us but we’re not sure why, all we have to do is Just Ask.
