Big Read Summary

Tuesday, April 16th 3pm - 9pm

670 attendees, 269 cities are participating this year.

The first day’s orientation consisted of Grants and Program Management, Education and Promotional Materials, and miscellaneous contact information: arts.blog.bigread.com, hotline 612-238-8010, thebigread@artsmidwest.org.

We had dinner (chicken with some weird cheesy stuff on the top that we all scraped off in order to eat the chicken) then a keynote speech by Tim O’Brien, the author of The Things They Carried, which is one of the Big Read selections. He told us about watching his son disappear into the ocean and I didn’t know if that was true or not. He recounted his childhood girlfriend’s dying from a brain tumor, and the death of his father, so I left feeling a bit depressed.

　

Wednesday, April 17

Successful Community Partnerships:

Public Officials - let them pick the event they want to attend; work around their schedule

Programs off site - film festivals, writing workshops, panel discussions

Nature center - Call of the Wild kickoff at local Nature center

Community College - professor did lectures about book

Senior Center - book discussions, birds of prey program

Boy Scouts

Camping Trips

Senior Assistant Centers - cross collaboration with high school readers

See page 15 -16 for additional resources

Managing Public and Media Relations

Political and elected officials on board - be aware of election cycle

Create a timeline

Daily Newspaper - recruit editor for Big Read team, articles

Wrap buses with advertisements for Big Read

Hold monthly meetings with team

Book Clubs and reading groups - get the word out and solicit readers to join

Website - online trivia contest, teasers

Partners who do their own advertising - make sure they use Big Read logo

Licensing - if people read from the book and are videotaped - can’t do that

Face book page

Have publicity photos ready to go, contact info. Ready to go

Video promotion - be aware of what message you’re sending out. One had high schoolers doing a Jeopardy type game and nobody knew the answers

Photos - have signed releases, announce at programs that photos may be used for publication - tacit permission

Letters to the editor - encourage people to write letters if they enjoyed program, work with editors

Public service announcements - buy a block of ad time, if they run ours for free, have contests for high schoolers to create a psa, most effective are psa’s with local people, community based

Look for ideas on You tube - look up Big Read

Involving and Working with Schools

Artistic connections - exhibits with school art projects, photography

What worked: giving away copies of book with readers guide, Tableing - going into high schools cafeteria and setting up a table with free books and info.

What didn’t work: film contest

What worked:

Contact schools earlier the better - be clear to administrators what is in it for them and their students - first contact administrators, attend regional meetings, work with teachers

Lesson plan - approaching schools

Create PowerPoint, meet with teams of teachers, give them book bags or t-shirts

Customize the Big Read banners - a printer can apply removable stuff that you can use a blow dryer to remove

Junior college, private schools, reluctant readers, extra credit activities, work with school curriculum

What didn’t work: timing of their program

Elementary school:

Family reading nights

High schoolers help out

Abridged versions of book

Mark Twain impersonator

One act play

Art project - lumberyard donated pieces of fence which were given to schools to decorate illustrating the themes from the book, then displayed at their Tom Sawyer Day festival - ice cream social, music, hay rides, watermelon spitting contest, fishing

Reluctant readers

5 session book club - receive prize for reading

Use retirees

Newspapers: use a question from the Readers guide and ask for an adult response and a kids response and post them so you can see each group responded.

Involve home schools - associations or cooperative groups

Programming Discussion

Mock funeral - “Bury Illiteracy” - hearse, with lots of food and music - Alabama contingent

Get ideas from Teen Advisory Council

Family picnic, parades, contests on a lake or river

Read it Forward - book has a sticker with library’s blog information and left at various places - next time someone travels leave Bless Me Ultima and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in the waiting room

Bobby Horton - composer of Ken Burns documentary will conduct symphony for a couple of thousand - let’s check him out

One act plays - 45 min. play with kids as the actors - script from Colin Cox - I’ll email him

Toddler versions of books - “Danger in the Graveyard”

Family friendly - Little Read and Littlest Read - guess we weren’t the first ones to do a Little Read

Senior Centers - read chapters from book

　
Original illustrations in public domain. Contact Mark Twain House for good scans - $15 Jeff.Mainville@marktwainhouse.org

Permission slips for books - challenging book, we encourage you to read the book with your child

Oral History - one library is doing a local history project by taking oral histories - thought this is a great idea since we received the grant for local history

Read the book out loud

How to sell the book to adults - one man was concerned that Tom Sawyer wouldn’t appeal to his adult audience - impress upon them the importance of Mark Twain’s literature

Create a backdrop of Tom and Becky - kids and adults can stick their heads in the empty slots where the heads would be

Life size poster of Mark Twain at guildcraft
　

Reconvened at 2pm for a wrap up and film Conversation with Rudolfo Anaya which is really good. We came back with a lot of great ideas!