The opportunity is that BC Reads brings the library’s mission together – exploring a topic through diverse narratives and perspectives; learning facts and real experiences related to the theme; creating community through reading and discussion; and connecting authors with their readers by bringing them to BCPL. The challenge was to address race and social equity in a sensitive, inclusive, and healing way, one year to the month after the uprising in Baltimore.

BC Reads featured a theme that was timely, relevant, and that would resonate with Baltimore County residents. Rather than one book, an adult fiction and nonfiction title, a YA title, a middle-school title, and a picture book representing “Rise Up!” were selected. The five award-winning books chosen included stories of learning and growing, of rising up through adversity, of connecting with one another. All the authors except Ta Nehisi Coates made in-person visits. The BC Reads formula offers the opportunity to select a critical issue that will engage and resonate with the community each year.

Fifteen programs were offered both on and off-site to multiple ages, including a multi-generational panel discussion of African American fathers and sons, reacting to Coates’ Between the World and Me. Though individual programs were not as well-attended as we hoped during this inaugural year, they made a huge personal impact on those who did attend. BC Reads allowed BCPL to further our vision of empowered and engaged individuals in an inclusive and connected Baltimore County community. The theme of ‘Rise Up!’ reinforced BCPL’s strategic concepts of the library as “gracious space”, as “community convener”, and as an “instrument of democracy.”