Welcome to Radio Bristol Book Club! Inspired by the museum’s current special exhibit – Reading Appalachia: Voices from Children’s Literature – readers from the Birthplace of Country Music and the Bristol Public Library are coming together each month to celebrate and explore one book featured in the exhibit. We invite you to read along and then listen in on the fourth Thursday of each month at 11—11:30am when we will dig deep into the feelings and questions raised by the books, learn more about the authors, and celebrate the joys of being a bookworm!
The book for June is The Journal of Jesse Smoke. A Cherokee Boy by Joseph Bruchac, and we will be discussing this novel on June 27 at 11am live on Radio Bristol.
The Journal of Jesse Smoke is part of book series published by Scholastic Books, each historical novel written in the form of a diary or journal by a boy or girl during an important period of American history. Jesse Smoke is a Cherokee boy living in Tennessee who chronicles the final debate over the fate of the Cherokee nation and then their harrowing days on the Trail of Tears in 1838. The story – from the loss of their homes and land to the cruelties and the prejudice they faced, and sprinkled throughout with historical facts, Cherokee words and traditions, and the stories of other members of his tribe – is made even more real through its telling in the teenage voice of Jesse. The book serves as a poignant and powerful view into this tragic chapter in American history.
Joseph Bruchac is a member of the Nulhegan Abenaki tribe. He lives in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, where he works with other family members to preserve the native culture of the region. Bruchac has written over 120 books for both children and adults, along with hundreds of articles, poems, and stories, and he has won numerous awards including the Cherokee Nation Prose Award and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas in 1999.
We cannot wait to bring Joseph Bruchac’s The Journal of Jesse Smoke to Radio Bristol Book Club! We hope you can join us as we discuss this wonderfully detailed historic novel. Stop by the Bristol Public Library and check out a copy today – the librarians will be happy to help you find the book!
Make plans to join us at 11am on Thursday, June 27 for Radio Bristol Book Club! You can tune in locally at 100.1 FM or listen via the website or app.