Read Across Texas Promotes Empathy in Communities

The Texas Center for the Book (TCFB) invites libraries and readers statewide to join in its 2023 reading campaign. “Read Across Texas: Empathy” kicks off in March, with libraries signing up to facilitate reading and discussion opportunities on what empathy looks like in their communities.

The program offers libraries a blueprint for encouraging groups to explore and discuss issues that can encourage empathy. Sharing literature helps individuals discuss their own stories to build understanding and support.

The Texas Center for the Book is pleased to announce a partnership with BookPeople — an Austin-based bookstore — and the Texas Library and Archives Foundation for the event. Both organizations are contributing to a grant program that funds 10 copies of one of four titles for use by Texas libraries.

Author Naomi Shihab Nye who is wellknown for the poem “Kindness” is featured in an in-person event at 7 p.m. on

February 25 at BookPeople in Austin. Nye is the author of one of this year’s featured titles, Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners.

The four chosen book selections that give communities a platform to engage in challenging, insightful, and transformative conversations include: Milo Imagines the World, a picture book by Matt de la Peña; Remarkably Bright Creatures, a novel by Shelby Van Pelt; and Truth Worth Telling: A Reporter’s Search for Meaning in the Stories of Our Times, a memoir by 60 Minutes broadcast journalist Scott Pelley.

“These four titles provide a wonderful jumping-off point for communities statewide to explore this year’s theme of empathy through literature,” says Gloria Meraz, Director and Librarian of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. “This is a fantastic opportunity for libraries to be sites of community, empathy, and transformation through the power of reading.”

Participating organizations may conduct programs any time throughout the spring and summer when a brief report on the program is requested. Book group leaders can access an online step-by-step facilitator toolkit that includes materials such as a how-to guide, additional recommended titles, digital resources, and links to empathy-specific discussion questions.

Texans can also support the program by donating to the Texas Library and Archives Foundation at www.txlaf.org/ giving. For information visit the Read Across Texas website at www.tsl.texas. gov/readacrosstexas.