Happy Friday, Wildcats! The Falvey Memorial Library is happy to announce the start of a new weekly blog series: Weekend Recs, a blog dedicated to filling you in on what to read, listen to, and watch over the weekend. Daniella, one of our graduate assistants from the English department, will scour the internet each week to find new, relevant, and thought-provoking content that will challenge you and prepare you for the upcoming week. 

Today, I want us to celebrate the most bookish of holidays: Drop Everything and Read Day. The idea comes from the Beverly Cleary book (Ramona Quimby, Age 8) and is celebrated every year on the author’s birthday, April 12. Beverly Cleary is still alive, and today she turns 103!

Many schools across the country participate in this holiday. This is how Lynne Routzong, a first- through fifth-grade resource room teacher in Alabama, participates:

“We celebrate reading for a week. On Monday the teachers perform skits taken from familiar story books. On Tuesday at a given time our school will Drop Everything And Read (DEAR) whether students are in PE, music, etc. On Wednesday we have a storybook character parade/contest. On Thursday we have a short story writing/illustrating contest. On Friday local football players, cheerleaders and band members will come to our school for a pep rally for reading. Later that day city officials will visit schools and read to classrooms” (NEA.org).

Colleges and universities don’t celebrate this holiday with pep rallies and skits performed by educators (which I think should change), but it only makes sense to offer popular book recommendations for this weekend, so that you too can celebrate National Library Week and drop everything and read!

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens