Hartland Library to Receive $9,000 Grant to Encourage Reading

The Cromaine District Library is planning to focus on "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" as part of a project to encourage reading in the community in 2012.

Events, music and food related to the Mark Twain classic will be funded by a $9,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that was announced earlier this month.

The library is one of 76 nonprofits nationwide to receive $1 million to host a Big Read project between September and June 2012 and the only location in Michigan to receive the grant.

It's the fourth time the library has received an NEA grant since 2007 and follows closely after the library for an early literacy center.

"We’re confident that the support of our greater Hartland area and Livingston County community was instrumental in receiving this fourth grant," Library Director Ceci Marlow said in a news release. "Our Friends’ leadership gifts in these years cannot happen without their dedication, membership, donations of used materials, and the community’s participation in their sales. We welcome new sponsors and in-kind participants in this event.”

As part of the program, the library will receive free educational materials to supplement the book, including author biographies, historical context for the book, and discussion questions, the release said. These materials along with teacher's guides and audio features will be distributed to educators and the community, the release said.

“’The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’” is much more than a story of young boy’s halcyon days in a small town," Marlow said in the release. "Between its covers and in companion works such as “Adventures of Huck Finn” there is a great deal to be learned about integrity, the value of a human being, and how our choices, especially as young people, make long-term differences in our lives.”

For more information about The Big Read, please visit www.neabigread.org.