For Immediate Release
March 25, 2009
Contact: Susan Coleman
Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
145 Ednam Drive Charlottesville, VA 22903
PH: 434-982-2983 FAX: 434-296-4714
Email: spcoleman@virgnia.edu
http://www.virginiafoundation.org/bookcenter
(electronic copies and accompanying graphics are available)
Big Read in Virginia
Last Call for Free Reading and Teaching Resources
for Their Eyes Were Watching God
The Virginia Center for the Book has free reader’s guides and teacher’s guides with lesson plans for the modern classic Their Eyes Were Watching God as part of the statewide “Big Read in Virginia,” which runs through May 2009. These materials will not be available after May. Shipping is free to schools, libraries, and other non-profit agencies. A handling fee will be assessed for shipments to residences. To find out more about the Big Read in Virginia, visit virginiafoundation.org/bookcenter and click on “Big Read” for more information.
Virginia First Lady Anne Holton, wife of Governor Tim Kaine, continues her role as Honorary Chair of the “Big Read in Virginia. She was also the Honorary Chair of the recently concluded Big Read in Virginia featuring To Kill a Mockingbird.
In addition, the Center is promoting the “Big Read for Little Readers,” featuring the children’s picture book, Roy Makes a Car, written by Virginia author Mary E. Lyons and based on a folktale collected by Hurston in her anthropological work in the 1930’s. A coloring page is available to download at the website. Lyons is also the author of Sorrow’s Kitchen, a young adult biography of Hurston.
The National Endowment for the Arts awarded grants to208 organizations nationwide totaling $2,810,500 to host Big Read celebrations for fall 2008 and spring 2009. The “Big Read in Virginia” is the only statewide program in the nation.
The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest. Support for The Big Read is provided by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. It is designed to revitalize the role of literary reading in American popular culture. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, a 2004 NEA report, identified a critical decline in reading for pleasure among American adults. The Big Read aims to address this issue directly by providing citizens with the opportunity to read and discuss a single book within their communities.
The Virginia Center for the Book is also home to the Virginia Festival of the Book, an annual event held each March in Charlottesville; the Virginia Arts of the Book Center; the Virginia Literary Calendar; and “VABooks!” a monthly book recommendation column. More information can be found at virginiafoundation.orgbookcenter.