Great Lakes, Great Read, the “one book, one community” program designed to inspire passion and connection to the Great Lakes Watershed through reading, will kick off the season with a series of three webinars to introduce the authors and books chosen for the 2024-2025 season. Meet GLGR authors Sally Cole-Misch and Joanne Robertson in conversation with Wisconsin Water Librarian Anne Moser on Sept. 25 at 7 p.m. ET/6 p.m. CT. Registration is required. Individual author webinars will be held Oct. 2 with Sally Cole-Misch and Oct. 9 with Joanne Robertson. Both webinars will also start at 7 p.m. ET/6 p.m. CT. Everyone is invited to join this Great Lakes basin-wide book club!
Local public libraries and bookstores can host watch parties, and individuals can register on their own or host their own watch party. Flyers are available to share with communities here: https://greatlakesgreatread.org/toolkit/.
Great Lakes, Great Read is modeled after One Book One Community and state- or province-wide annual reading programs that choose one book for libraries, citizen groups of all kinds and the public to read and enjoy over the course of a year. Whether you live near the Great Lakes or far away, their beauty, history and significance are impossible to ignore. They’ve been home to 120 bands of Indigenous people, provided drinking water for millions, held flourishing biodiversity and 20% of the world’s surface fresh water and more. Dive into this project and deepen your connection to a system that shaped the U.S. and Canada and continues to sculpt stories today.
The Great Lakes, Great Read program features two books: “The Water Walker” by Joanne Robertson is the children’s selection, and the adult selection is “The Best Part of Us” by Sally Cole-Misch.
“The Water Walker” is the story of a determined Ojibwe grandmother, a “nokomis” named Josephine Mandamin, who walks to raise awareness of the need to protect “nibi” (water). Robertson wrote and illustrated the book, which was published in 2017.
Published in 2020, Sally Cole-Misch’s award-winning novel, “The Best Part of Us,” explores a family’s connections to an island in the Canadian waters of an inland lake just north of Lake Huron, and how those ties are tested through nature and family dynamics.
The authors are available for in-person and online conversations and presentations with libraries, book clubs and other groups throughout the region during the 2024-2025 period.
The Great Lakes, Great Read website, https://www.greatlakesgreatread.org, offers further details on the authors, their books, book discussion questions, a toolkit and other resources, including contact lists for states and provinces.
This initiative is made possible by an Ideas to Action grant from WiLS in Madison, Wisconsin. In-kind support was provided by the staff with the Wisconsin Water Library at UW Madison, Wisconsin Sea Grant, the Wisconsin Library Association and UW-Parkside. Wisconsin Sea Grant and the University of Wisconsin Water Resources Institute support the Wisconsin Water Library.
Several organizations, including the Wisconsin Water Library at UW Madison, Public Libraries of Saginaw, the Gail Borden Library and the Library of the Great Lakes have partnered to create and carry out the Great Lakes, Great Read program. For more information and to sign up to participate, visit https://www.greatlakesgreatread.org.
