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We bring our community together around one book and use this shared experience of reading, discussing and exploring the themes of the book as a springboard to learn from and listen to each other.

Please go to bigreadlakeshore.com for more information about this year’s program.

2024 Book

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is considered F. Scott Fitzgerald’s magnum opus, exploring themes of decadence, idealism, social stigmas, patriarchal norms and the deleterious effects of unencumbered wealth in a capitalistic society, set against the backdrop of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties. At its heart, it’s a cautionary tale, a revealing look into the darker side to the American Dream.Find the Book

Companion Book

American Born Chinese

Gene Luen Yang

A tour-de-force by New York Times bestselling graphic novelist Gene Yang, American Born Chinese tells the story of three apparently unrelated characters: Jin Wang, who moves to a new neighborhood with his family only to discover that he's the only Chinese-American student at his new school; the powerful Monkey King, subject of one of the oldest and greatest Chinese fables; and Chin-Kee, a personification of the ultimate negative Chinese stereotype, who is ruining his cousin Danny's life with his yearly visits. Their lives and stories come together with an unexpected twist in this action-packed modern fable. American Born Chinese is an amazing ride, all the way up to the astonishing climax.Find the Book

Middle Read Book

Mexikid

Pedro Martin

Winner of the Pura Belpré Author Award and Illustrator Award • One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, Booklist, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library

Pedro Martín has grown up hearing stories about his abuelito—his legendary crime-fighting, grandfather who was once a part of the Mexican Revolution! But that doesn't mean Pedro is excited at the news that Abuelito is coming to live with their family. After all, Pedro has 8 brothers and sisters and the house is crowded enough! Still, Pedro piles into the Winnebago with his family for a road trip to Mexico to bring Abuelito home, and what follows is the trip of a lifetime, one filled with laughs and heartache. Along the way, Pedro finally connects with his abuelito and learns what it means to grow up and find his grito.Find the Book

Check out our Little Read Lakeshore program for children in elementary school (grades P–5) 

Our programming draws diverse participation within our community, generating conversations and discussion groups across generational, cultural, racial and socioeconomic divides and experiences. These events take place in a variety of spaces and locations. We also work with area elementary, middle and high schools to engage area students in the larger conversations of our community.

Our main events are planned to approach a book and its topics from a variety of perspectives, experiences and angles, organizing events that include interesting lectures by great speakers as well as using film, food, music and art to explore and celebrate the topics under discussion.

Big Read Lakeshore is a collaborative effort with support from many community partners.

Previous books

2023 – HomegoingMiddle Grade: The Door of No Return; New Kid

Homegoing

Yaa Gyasi

“No one forgets that they were once captive, even if they are now free.” —Homegoing

Spanning three continents and eight generations, Yaa Gyasi’s critically acclaimed, debut novel Homegoing begins with two Ghanaian sisters in the 18th century who lead parallel, yet divergent lives: one stays in Ghana and becomes a wealthy slave trader’s wife; one is sold into slavery and sent to America. The novel follows the lives of their descendants—from Ghana’s beaches to the plantations of Mississippi, the American Civil War to Jazz Age Harlem—offering an essential examination of power and privilege, memory and legacy. It’s “intelligent… and healing… destined to become a classic” (author Zadie Smith), “a beautiful story” (The Daily Show host and author Trevor Noah). “No novel has better illustrated the way in which racism became institutionalized in this country” (Vogue). “When people talk about all the things fiction can teach its readers, they’re talking about books like this” (Marie Claire).

Find the Book

The Door of No Return

Kwame Alexander

From the Newbery Medal and Coretta Scott King Award winning author Kwame Alexander, comes the first book in a searing, breathtaking trilogy that tells the story of a boy, a village, and the epic odyssey of an African family.

In his village in Upper Kwanta, 11-year-old Kofi loves his family, playing oware with his grandfather and swimming in the river Offin. He’s warned though, to never go to the river at night.  His brother tells him ”There are things about the water you do not know. “ Like what? Kofi asks. “The beasts.” His brother answers.

 One fateful night, the unthinkable happens and in a flash, Kofi’s world turns upside down. Kofi soon ends up in a fight for his life and what happens next will send him on a harrowing journey across land and sea, and away from everything he loves.

 This spellbinding novel by the author of The Crossover and Booked will take you on an unforgettable adventure that will open your eyes and break your heart.

Find the Book

New Kid

Jerry Craft

Winner of the Newbery Medal, Coretta Scott King Author Award, and Kirkus Prize for Young Readers’ Literature! 

Perfect for fans of Raina Telgemeier and Gene Luen Yang, New Kid is a timely, honest graphic novel about starting over at a new school where diversity is low and the struggle to fit in is real, from award-winning author-illustrator Jerry Craft. 

Seventh grader Jordan Banks loves nothing more than drawing cartoons about his life. But instead of sending him to the art school of his dreams, his parents enroll him in a prestigious private school known for its academics, where Jordan is one of the few kids of color in his entire grade.

As he makes the daily trip from his Washington Heights apartment to the upscale Riverdale Academy Day School, Jordan soon finds himself torn between two worlds—and not really fitting into either one. Can Jordan learn to navigate his new school culture while keeping his neighborhood friends and staying true to himself?

2022 – Circe

Circe

Madeline Miller

“Think a novel based on Greek mythology isn’t for you? Just wait” (People).

Madeline Miller’s bestselling, critically acclaimed second novel Circe — about the goddess Circe — has been called “spellbinding” (O Magazine), “vivid, transporting” (Entertainment Weekly), “an epic page turner” (Christian Science Monitor), and “a romp, an airy delight, a novel to be gobbled greedily in a single sitting” (Guardian). Following her debut novel, The Song of Achilles, Miller takes on the world of gods, monsters, mortals and nymphs in this “bold and subversive retelling of the goddess’s story that manages to be both epic and intimate in its scope, recasting the most infamous female figure from the Odyssey as a hero in her own right” (New York Times). Miller “paints an uncompromising portrait of a superheroine who learns to wield divine power while coming to understand what it means to be mortal” (Publishers Weekly, Starred Review). The myths have been retold many times “and yet in Miller’s lush reimagining, the story feels harrowing and unexpected. The… fate that awaits Circe is at once divine and mortal, impossibly strange and yet entirely human” (Washington Post).

2021 – An American Sunrise: Poems

An American Sunrise: Poems

by Joy Harjo

In this stunning collection, Joy Harjo finds blessings in the abundance of her homeland and confronts the site where the Mvskoke people, including her own ancestors, were forcibly displaced. From her memory of her mother’s death, to her beginnings in the Native rights movement, to the fresh road with her beloved, Harjo’s personal life intertwines with tribal histories to create a space for renewed beginnings.

2020 – In the Heart of the SeaMiddle Grade: In the Heart of the Sea (Young Reader’s Edition)

In the Heart of the Sea

Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea is “one of the most chilling books I have ever read,” writes Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm. Winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction and on the New York Times bestseller list for 40 weeks, this “spellbinding” (Time) “page turner” (New York Times) tells the true story of the 19th-century whaleship Essex out of Nantucket that got rammed by one of the largest whales anyone had ever seen, the whale that inspired Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. But the story doesn’t end there. The ship sank, sending the crewmembers adrift for months as they faced storms, starvation and disease. Award-winning author of more than ten books, Philbrick “has created an eerie thriller from a centuries old tale… Scrupulously researched and eloquently written, In the Heart of the Sea is a masterpiece of maritime history,” writes the New York Times. “It gets into your bones.”

In the Heart of the Sea (Young Reader’s Edition)

The New York Times bestselling and National Book Award-winning In the Heart of the Sea, adapted by the author for young readers.

On November 20, 1820, the whaleship Essex was rammed and sunk by an angry whale. Within minutes, the twenty-one-man crew, including the fourteen-year-old cabin boy Thomas Nickerson, found themselves stranded in three leaky boats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with barely any supplies and little hope. Three months later, two of the boats were rescued 4,500 miles away, off the coast of South America. Of the twenty-one castaways, only eight survived, including young Thomas. Based on his New York Times best-seller In the Heart of the Sea, Nathaniel Philbrick recreates the amazing events of the ill-fated Essex through the sailors' own first-hand accounts, photos, maps, and artwork, and tells the tale of one of the great true-life adventure stories.

2019 – In the Time of the ButterfliesMiddle Grade: Before We Were Free

In the Time of the Butterflies
It is November 25, 1960, and three beautiful sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The official state newspaper reports their deaths as accidental. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo’s dictatorship. It doesn’t have to. Everybody knows of Las Mariposas—“The Butterflies.” In this novel, the voices of all four sisters—Minerva, Patria, María Teresa, and the survivor, Dedé—speak across the decades to tell their own stories, from hair ribbons to prison torture, and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo’s rule. Through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez’s imagination, the martyred Butterflies live again in this novel of courage and love, and the human cost of political oppression.

Before We Were Free
Anita de la Torre never questioned her freedom living in the Dominican Republic. But by her twelfth birthday in 1960, most of her relatives have immigrated to the United States, her Tío Toni has disappeared without a trace, and the government’s secret police terrorize her remaining family because of their suspected opposition to Trujillo’s iron-fisted rule. Using the strength and courage of her family, Anita must overcome her fears and fly to freedom, leaving all that she once knew behind.

2018 – Station ElevenMiddle Grade: The Giver

Station Eleven
Set in the Great Lakes region 20 years after a flu pandemic wiped out 99 percent of the world’s population, “Station Eleven” centers on a traveling troupe that performs Shakespeare’s plays to the communities that have arisen in North America in the event’s aftermath. The narrative visits both the story’s post-apocalyptic present and the world before the pandemic, not only exploring the collapse of society and its aftermath but emphasizing the connections between people and the efforts of those seeking to do more than merely exist.

The Giver
This 1994 Newbery Medal winner, has become one of the most influential novels of our time. The haunting story centers on twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community.

2017 – When the Emperor Was Divine

“When the Emperor Was Divine” follows one Japanese family uprooted from its Berkeley home after the start of World War II. After being delivered to a racetrack in Utah, they are forcibly relocated to an internment camp. They spend two harrowing years there before returning to a home far less welcoming than it was before the war. Using five distinct but intertwined perspectives, Otsuka's graceful prose evokes the family's range of responses to internment. Culminating in a final brief and bitter chapter, Otsuka's novel serves as a requiem for moral and civic decency in times of strife and fragmentation.

2016 – Brother, I'm Dying

In 2016, we took on the challenge of memoir with a wonderful yet different life story of Edwidge Danticat entitled, Brother, I’m Dying. Our programming included an author visit, a Haitian food event, Haitian drumming and dancing, a documentary, lectures on immigration in our community, and a student exhibition of learning that featured the artwork of 800 middle, high school and college students who created art in response to the book. Our community impact was 10,000 participants.

2015 – The Things They Carried

In our second year, we read, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. More than 7,000 people attended 10 main events and took part in 49 public and private book discussion groups. We increased our school participation to 10 schools and 16 teachers, and we enjoyed the author as a guest speaker for a student event and for a standing-room-only event for the general public.

2014 – To Kill a Mockingbird

Our first year, we read To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Over 3,000 people participated in the seven main events and the 38 public and private book discussion groups. In that first year six schools, and eight teachers also took part.