NCS Unites to Read an Award-Winning Memoir

For the 2015-2016 school year, the NCS libraries are sponsoring a school-wide program called One Community/One Read. The program brings together students, parents, faculty and staff through the collective reading of one book, Jacqueline Woodson's "Brown Girl Dreaming." And it will culminate in April when Woodson herself comes to campus for NCS's annual Writer's Day to participate in a discussion about the book.

Woodson's story of growing up in Ohio, South Carolina, and Brooklyn is set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The memoir provokes an exploration of racial identity and civil rights, as well as of our current progress regarding both of them. It won the 2014 National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the 2015 Coretta Scott King Author Award, and it was named a 2015 Newbery Honor Book.

Library officials selected "Brown Girl Dreaming" for its potential to prompt discussion of such universal issues as kindness, love, support, courage, and family.

At NCS, this discussion will take place first in divisions: The Middle School will take it up in homerooms on Sept. 21, with the Upper School doing the same on Sept. 30. (The Lower School discussion has not yet been scheduled.) The larger discussion will then follow in April.

The NCS Libraries have more information on the One Community/One Read program.