Piedmont CONNECT launches Piedmont’s 1st Community Book
For more than a decade, cities and towns across America have read a community book. According to the Library of Congress, there were 404 communities reading one book in 2007. Seattle is credited with starting the fad, known as “One Book, One City,“ but since the 1980’s, some colleges have welcomed freshman students with “A Book in Common” for all to read.
For Piedmont’s first Community Book, Piedmont High School librarian Susan Stutzman and English Department Head Beth Black selected The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba, a paperback book first published in 2009. The book is an inspiring tale of recycling by a 14-year-old boy in rural Malawi who builds a windmill using salvaged materials he gathers in the famine– and poverty-ridden backcountry of Malawi, Africa.
Watch for the program launch on Tuesday, February 1. Piedmont CONNECT’s Book Group will read the same book.