If All Arkansas Read the Same Book is an annual, statewide reading program designed to encourage the enjoyment of reading and to promote book discussion in libraries across Arkansas. The selection for 2020’s If All Arkansas Read the Same Book is bestselling author Kim Michele Richardson’s novel, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek (Sourcebooks Landmark, 2019).

The novel takes place in Depression-era Kentucky, and follows Cussy Mary Carter who becomes a librarian during the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) Pack Horse Library Project. Since its original publication, the book remains popular with book club readers around the state and country.

You can check out the ebook The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson on Library2Go without waitlist or holds using your library card. You can use the OverDrive or Libby apps.

Events for the project typically culminate in an author speaking tour. Please join us on July 15 and July 16 at 2 p.m. for virtual programs with author, Kim Michele Richardson. More details are forthcoming closer to the event dates.

OverDrive is launching a new program called Black Lives Matter: Community Read. They are providing antiracism and social justice titles that are focused on #ownvoices and are intended to help patrons read, listen, learn and grow as they expand their knowledge of race relations. You will be able to check these books out without waitlist or holds using your library card. You can use the OverDrive or Libby apps.

Current titles:

Monday, June 15 – July 15
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Audiobook simultaneous use
Named one of the Most Influential Books of the Last 20 Years by the Chronicle of Higher Education and winner of the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction, Alexander’s critically acclaimed book examines racial disparities through the lens of mass incarceration.

Monday, June 22 – July 19
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Ebook and audiobook simultaneous use
This bestselling young adult novel follows Starr, a Black teenager caught between the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these two worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her unarmed best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer.

Monday, June 22 – July 12
Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F Saad
Ebook simultaneous use
This New York Times bestseller published in January 2020 is based on the viral #meandwhitesupremacy Instagram challenge and provides a framework for readers to dismantle the privilege within themselves.

Monday, June 29 – July 26
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijemoa Oluo
Audiobook simultaneous use
Ijeoma Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from intersectionality and affirmative action to “model minorities” in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race and racism, and how they exist in almost every aspect of American life.

For more reading, check out OverDrive’s social justice and activism list.