Maleah Evans / Wichita Journalism Collaborative
Join the Maya Angelou Northeast Branch Library on March 29 from 2-4 p.m. for this year’s Big Read come-and-go kick-off event.
The Big Read is an annual event held by the Wichita Public Library, designed for people to come together, read the same book and then engage with it through activities and discussions.
At the kick off events, people are able to pick up copies of the book, and participate in activities related to the book. Usually, the library invites the author of the book as a speaker, but was unable to this year due to a lack of funding.
This year’s book is “Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude,” a collection of poetry by author Ross Gay.
“It’s more than just poetry,” Adult Literacies Manager Steven Kelly said. “It heavily involves themes of nature, of community, finding joy and expressing gratitude about relationships and about the human connection with the natural world.”
Because this collection of poetry is tied to humanity’s connection to the natural world, it fits with a fairly new initiative of the Wichita Public Library that is built to help with food insecurity.
At the Maya Angelou library, 3051 21st N., they’ve created a seed library, where people are able to grab three packets of seeds with each visit. They also have broken ground on a new community garden at the library.
“At our kickoff event on Sunday, March 29, we’re going to have tours of the community garden, what it looks like right now and then, what it will look like, how we envision it’ll look like when it’s finished and when it’s mature,” Kelly said.
Cynthia Pizzini-Martin, who created a community garden in her front lawn last spring, said that for anyone who wants to start a community garden of their own, attending the kick off event is a great place to start.
“Once people are educated about any subject, it just becomes less scary,” Pizzini-Martin said. “Once you have the knowledge about it, you realize it’s really been done since the beginning of time, and there’s really not so much you can do to kind of mess it up … if that seed doesn’t work out, then you just plant another.
“The education is so important, and have everyone just come out (to the kick-off) and learn a little something.”
The Maya Angelou branch is at 3051 E. 21st St. A full list of all Big Read events, which run through April, can be found here.
Maleah Evans is the Spring Semester intern for the Wichita Journalism Collaborative. Maleah is a senior at Wichita State University and a member of The Sunflower staff.