Northern Arizona creates online materials for common read, The Underground Girls of Kabul

When members of the class of of 2020 arrive at Northern Arizona University in August, they will engage in thoughtful discussion on The Underground Girls of Kabul — Jenny Nordberg’s powerful and moving account of young girls who dress as boys in deeply segregated Afghanistan where girls have almost no rights and little freedom.

NAU has created materials to augment discussions: a chapter map to parse out topics and connect them to the text; a flier complete with author Jenny Nordberg’s campus visit information to promote the book and support discussion leaders; and a bookmark with title information.

Click here to read more about The Underground Girls of Kabul.

Click here for more information on the author’s speaking arrangements.

Click here to learn about similar materials that NAU created for their 2015 Common Reading program feature Bryan Stevenson and Just Mercy.

The Start-up of You Author Ben Casnocha Gets Ringing Endorsement from Tennessee Tech

A note of appreciation from Allen Mullis, First Year Read Director at Tennessee Tech University:

“We wanted students, especially our incoming freshmen, to understand the importance of taking control of their career now by getting engaged not only within their major, but to also establish interdisciplinary engagement as well. The “Start-Up of You” helps identify tools and ideas for students to incorporate into their collegiate experience to help achieve their career goals.”

Click here to watch Ben Casnocha at the First-Year Experience® 2013 Random House Event.

Random House Academic Resources Confirms Author Lineup for the 2015 First-Year Experience® Conference

Random House Academic Resources’ author line-up for the 2015 First-Year Experience® Conference (February 7-10, Dallas, Texas) is now confirmed.  Our authors hail from diverse backgrounds and their books reflect that: from books on social justice to best-selling novels, we will have something for every FYE program.  Here is the line-up (in order of appearance):

Marjane Satrapi Announces Persepolis Speaking Tour

Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis and co-creator of the award-winning 2007 animated film adaptation, will be kicking off her U.S. speaking tour October 15^th in Washington, D.C. Her coming-of-age graphic memoir has been one of the most popular Common Reading choices nationwide with over 95 university adoptions. The story of growing up in Revolutionary Iran, it is both accessible for a variety of reading levels and profoundly relevant to American students’ rapidly expanding worldviews.

“Sincere, inspiring, and wonderfully human”: Boston College on Colum McCann’s Convocation Address

The following piece was written by Rev. Joseph P. Marchese, Boston College’s Director of First-Year Experience in support of Colum McCann and his novel Let The Great World Spin: A Novel (Random House Trade Paperbacks, November 2009):

In September 2011, Boston College hosted author Colum McCann and featured his novel Let the Great World Spin at the University’s First Year Academic Convocation.  This event is a rich tradition at Boston College, assembling the freshmen class in its totality for the first time, and tasking students with the charge to “Go, set the world aflame!” in the spirit of Saint Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus.  Convocation speakers have featured authors, politicians, and other leaders including Dr. Paul Farmer, Tracy Kidder, Senator John McCain, Jeanette Walls, Ann Patchett, Bill Strickland, and in 2005, then Senator of Illinois, Barack Obama.

David Levithan Electrifies Crowd at Northern Arizona University

More than 1,000 students, faculty and community members gathered at Northern Arizona University on September 16 to hear the author of New York Times Bestseller Every Day, David Levithan (Ember, September 2013), present on his book as part of the NAUreads program.  Partnering with Flagstaff Reads, the program has created a common book experience and encourages dialogue within the community.  More than 4,600 freshmen received complimentary copies of Levithan’s book during their orientation.  Local media covered the event.

Every Day, which follows a character named “A” who wakes up in a different body each day, challenges students to comprehend the complexities of life and love in A’s every-changing world. NAU students were prompted to “…think about what it means to be true to yourself and who you want to be as a student at Northern Arizona University. What expectations will guide you through you NAU journey?”

David Levithan will be speaking at the Random House 2014 First-Year Experience® Luncheon.

Click here to read an excerpt

Click here to learn more about NAUreads

To read the local newspaper’s coverage of the event, click here

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The Other Wes Moore Makes an Impact on Penn State Berks Students

Penn State Berks recently selected The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore for its 2012-2013 Common Reading program. All incoming baccalaureate students were required to read the book prior to the start of the fall semester. We were thrilled to learn that the book and the author’s visit had a real impact; the university shared this positive feedback from one of its first-year students:

“All throughout high school as horrible as it sounds I never read our books assigned for class. I was never interested in reading something that just didn’t interest me, like Shakespeare. But, when I discovered I had to read a book for first year seminar, I assumed it would just be like all the high school books I was assigned to read. I went and bought the book, read the back cover and thought it sounded interesting and started reading. I was glued to the book and couldn’t put it down, which was a first for me.”

Click here to learn more about the Penn State Berks Common Reading Program. They also have a fun, informative, and interactive Facebook page now featuring The Other Wes Moore.

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Louisburg College’s My Orange Duffel Bag Project

This week, author Sam Bracken was featured as the opening speaker at Louisburg College’s kickoff celebration for the school’s 225th anniversary week.  My Orange Duffel Bag: A Journey to Radical Change was selected as the college’s common reading title, and author Sam Bracken went to visit the campus to share his story with faculty and students.

Faculty at Louisburg College have developed engaging assignments related to the book for their Crossroads Program, a program designed to get first-year students to explore not only how they learn, but also how they live their lives. Below is a sampling of assignments connected to the “My Orange Duffel Bag Project”:

1. Decorate the Cover! Be creative. Decorate the cover of the notebook any way that you would like – it just needs to be decorate. You can draw, paint, cover, or do anything you think will make it look cool and look like you!
2. First 10 Pages – these pages will serve as journal pages. Each class you will be given a topic to journal on and have some time to do this at the beginning of each class.
3. Next 10 Pages – these pages are “YOU” pages. You should include anything that is important to you

Author Eboo Patel on Interfaith Activism and Pluralism

In the decade following the attacks of 9/11, suspicion and animosity toward American Muslims has increased rather than subsided. In this timely new book, author, activist, and presidential advisor Eboo Patel says this prejudice is not just a problem for Muslims but also a challenge to the very idea of America. Sacred Ground shows readers that Americans from George Washington to Martin Luther King Jr. have been “interfaith leaders,” and it illustrates how the forces of pluralism in America have time and again defeated the forces of prejudice.

Read Patel’s message to all educators and students:

College changed me, and it made me want to change the world – especially regarding diversity. I entered as a freshman embarrassed by my brown skin, my strange name, and my mother’s food. I exited with a vision of a nation where people from diverse backgrounds live in equal dignity and mutually loyalty.

Sacred Ground is my Muslim eyes on the American project. The book highlights a dimension of America’s diversity that receives far too little attention

A Message from My Orange Duffel Bag Author Sam Bracken

Abandoned at age 15, Sam Bracken battled homelessness, poverty, and abuse to successfully earn a full-ride football scholarship to the Georgia Institute of Technology. When he left for college, everything he owned fit in an orange duffel bag. Now, in this illustrated memoir and road map to personal transformation, Sam shares his story as well as everything he’s learned about overcoming the odds.

When I was 13-years-old and in eighth grade, a caring teacher discovered that I needed glasses. Up until that point, I’d always been in special education classes. I grew up in Las Vegas in a family that was like a whacked out version of The Brady Bunch on an episode of Cops. I suffered every kind of abuse imaginable and started drinking and doing drugs at age 9. Mobsters and motorcycle gang members were my role models. As an eighth grader I decided I didn’t want to be like my family. I stopped drinking and doing drugs and with encouragement from my teachers and lots of hard work, I went from a C and F student in special education to a straight A student. My mother suffered a mental breakdown when I was 15 and abandoned me. I kept my homelessness secret