Welcome to Radio Bristol Book Club! Inspired by the museum’s current special exhibit – Reading Appalachia: Voices from Children’s Literature – readers from BCM 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 Radio Bristol (via 100.1 FM, the website, or the app) on the 4th 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!
Our first book is Sounder by William H. Armstrong, which we will be discussing on-air on Thursday, March 28.
Sounder is the award-winning book that tells the tale of a sharecropper family and their beloved coonhound Sounder in the late 19th-century South. Life as a sharecropper is hard, and the father and Sounder must hunt for food for the family every night. When food is scarce, the father resorts to stealing to provide for his starving family. Not long after, the sheriff and his deputies come to arrest the man, and Sounder is shot in the process. What follows is a story that is at times gut-wrenching and yet hopeful as we learn lessons in the loyalty, love, and courage one needs in the face of overwhelming adversity.
William H. Armstrong’s Sounder was the recipient of several awards, most notably the 1970 Newbery Medal; this award honors the “most distinguished contribution to American literature for children” and is celebrated annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association. In this installment of Radio Bristol Book Club, we will discuss the place that Sounder holds in literature, especially Appalachian literature. We will also discuss the way the author chose to tell this story and how effective this method was, both then and now.
We are so excited to bring Radio Bristol Book Club to you and cannot wait to discuss our first book! We hope you will join us and read Sounder for yourself. You can pick up a copy at your favorite local bookstore or stop by the Bristol Public Library and check out a copy of Sounder today! The librarians at the library will be happy to help you find a copy of the book in the format that suits you best, from book to audiobook to e-book.
Make plans to join us at 11:00am on Thursday, March 28 for Radio Bristol Book Club! And be sure to visit the Reading Appalachia exhibit, on display at the museum now through June 30, 2019!