One City One Book

One City One Book (also One Book One City, [City] Reads, On the Same Page and other variations) is a generic name for a community reading program that attempts to get everyone in a city to read and discuss the same book. The name of the program is often reversed to One Book One City, or is customized to name the city where it occurs. Popular book picks have been Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Ernest Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima.

History

One City One Book programs take the idea of a localized book discussion club and expand it to cover a whole city. The first such program was "If All of Seattle Read the Same Book" in 1998, started by Nancy Pearl at Seattle Public Library's Washington Center for the Book. The book chosen for the program was 'The Sweet Hereafter' by Russell Banks, written in 1991. Other cities copied the idea, and the Library of Congress listed 404 programs occurring in 2007.

Each city's program has its own goals; these typically include building a sense of community and promoting literacy. Nancy Pearl warns against expecting too much from a program: "Keep in mind that this is a library program, it's not an exercise in civics, it's not intended to have literature cure the racial divide. This is about a work of literature."

Programs typically involve more than having everyone read the same book. Some other activities that have been included are: book discussion sessions, scholarly lectures on the book or related topics, a visit by the author, exhibits, related arts programming (especially showing a movie of the book if there is one), and integration into school curricula. In Boston the "One City One Story" program used shorter stories and distributed tens of thousands of free copies of the story over the course of a month.

American Library Association puts out a detailed step-by-step guide on how to organize a local program, including the critical step of picking the one book. The Center for the Book at the Library of Congress tracks all known programs and the books they have used.

Significant "One Book" programs

Most listed are in the United States, perhaps because the meme started there and similar programs elsewhere have a different name.

Programs sponsored by public libraries are tracked each year by the Library of Congress. Most programs maintain their own websites devoted to the annual effort.

USA

The Library of Congress maintains a website with resources for cities that want to run One Book programs, including a partial list of authors and list of past programs. Some states and the ALA maintain their own resources to help cities get started.

National

• The National Endowment for the Arts has run a "Big Read" program since 2006, and gives grants to hundreds of communities each year to run reading programs based on a small set of books chosen for that year. Unlike single-city programs, the Big Read centrally chooses a list of a few books, and each city selects from that list.

By State

Since	City	State	Sponsoring library or org	Program name
2005	Yuma	Arizona	Yuma libraries	One Book Yuma
2003	Santa Monica	California	Santa Monica Public Library	Santa Monica Reads
2007	San Diego	California	KPBS, San Diego Public Library	One Book, One San Diego
2002		Connecticut	Eastern Connecticut Libraries	One Book One Region
2003	Gwinnett County	Georgia	Gwinnett County Libraries	Gwinnett Reads
2004	Winnetka-Northfield	Illinois	Winnetka-Northfield libraries	One Book, Two Villages - separate selection for children and adults
2004	South Bend	Indiania	Indiana University South Bend	One Book One Campus
2003		Iowa	Iowa Center for the Book	All Iowa Reads
2006		Kentucky	Northern Kentucky	One Book One Community
2008		Maryland	Maryland Humanities Council	One Maryland One Book
2004	Brookline	Massachusetts	Public Library of Brookline	Brookline Reads
2002	Falmouth	Massachusetts	Falmouth Public Library	What's Falmouth Reading
2010	Boston	Massachusetts	Boston Book Festival	One City One Story - distributes 30,000 free copies to area residents
2004	Cambridge	Massachusetts	Cambridge Public Library	Cambridge READS
2002	East Lansing	Michigan	City of East Lansing	One Book East Lansing
2004	Rochester	Minnesota		Rochester Reads
2002	Boone	Missouri	Daniel Boone Regional Library	One Read
	Bozeman	Montana		One Book One Bozeman
	Omaha	Nebraska	Millard Public Schools Foundation	One Disney One Book
2005	New Paltz	New York		One Book One New Paltz
2003	Western New York	New York		A Tale for Three Counties
2001	Rochester	New York		If All of Rochester Read the Same Book
2006	Schenectady	New York	Schenectady County Public Library	"One County One Book"
2001	Syracuse, Onondaga County	New York	Onondaga County Public Library	Central New York Reads One Book
2002	Cincinnati	Ohio		On the Same Page Cincinnati
2003	Findlay	Ohio	Findlay-Hancock Community Foundation	CommunityREAD
2007	Lake Oswego	Oregon	Lake Oswego Library	Lake Oswego Reads
2003	Multonmah County	Oregon	Multnomah County Library	Everybody Reads
2003	Centre County	Pennsylvania		Centre County Reads
2003	Philadelphia	Pennsylvania	Free Library of Philadelphia	One Book One Philadelphia
2002	South Central Pennsylvania	Pennsylvania	Several County Library Systems	One Book, One Community: Our Region Reads!
2004	Mansfield	Texas		One City One Book
2002	Austin	Texas	City of Austin	Mayor's Book Club
2004	Logan	Utah	Utah State University	Common Literature Experience
2003		Vermont	Vermont Humanities Council	Vermont Reads
2008	Henrico County	Virginia	Henrico County Public Library	All Henrico Reads
2004	Loudoun County	Virginia		1 Book, 1 Community
2011	Red Bank	New Jersey		One Book One Community: Honk! The Musical Tale of the Ugly Duckling

Alternate programs

Some cities that have run independent One Book programs have later joined Big Read instead. An annual "One World, Many Stories" summer reading campaign for children, which has a single selection for the country, has become popular as well.

Critical responses

For some, the mere idea of reading as a communal activity is repellent. The literary critic Harold Bloom said, "I don't like these mass reading bees.... It is rather like the idea that we are all going to pop out and eat Chicken McNuggets or something else horrid at once."

Others are concerned about the temptation to use such a program to promote social values. Phillip Lopate fears a promotion of groupthink, saying "It is a little like a science fiction plot -- 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' or something."

In New York City in 2002, the effort foundered when the selectors split into two rival groups, each with its own favorite: Chang-Rae Lee's Native Speaker and James McBride's The Color of Water. Both books were considered to be offensive to some of New York's ethnic groups. Nancy Pearl said, "It's turned into something not to do with literature but to do with curing the ills in society, and while there is a role for that, to ask a book to fit everybody's agenda in talking about particular issues just does a disservice to literature."

Governments are sometimes concerned that their endorsement of reading a book will be viewed as endorsing the ideas or language of the book. In Texas in 2006, the Galveston County Reads committee recommended Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time as the choice for their county-wide read. There was much criticism of the choice from the Mayor and Council of Friendswood, who objected to obscenity in the novel, and said that it contained ideas that should not be promoted to kids and that taxpayer money should not be used to promote and purchase a book the community wouldn't approve of.