Talking to New Canaan Library About ‘One Book New Canaan’

 

Starting in early February, New Canaan Library coordinated and led a town-wide reading project and no one really knew how it’d go.

Designed to get New Canaanites all reading the same book for a concentrated period of time, “One Book New Canaan” saw town residents of all ages pick up a copy of Nathaniel Philbrick’s award-winning “In the Heart of the Sea: the Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex.” (It’s a nonfiction account of the 1821 whaling tragedy that helped inspire Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.”)

In the past six weeks, the library has hosted events connected to One Book New Canaan, including two book talks on “In the Heart of the Sea.” And at 7 p.m. Friday at New Canaan High School auditorium (register here), Philbrick himself will come and speak to our town.

We caught up with New Canaan Library Programming Director Susan LaPerla to talk about the townwide reading initiative, and she told us some interesting things that the library discovered through the process of running One Book New Canaan—including a great suggestion from our town’s youth about a topic we could take up for a future project. Here’s our conversation, and we include some information about Philbrick himself at the end:

 

New Canaanite: We’re approaching the end of One Book New Canaan here in its inaugural year. How did it go?

Susan LaPerla: For the most part I think it’s been really successful. We’ve had a variety of groups and individuals in the community reading. It was gratifying to see high school students at all the events. We did the two book talks in town, one with a local book group and the other open to the public, and half the people that came were students. They were very insightful and had very good things to say about One Book New Canaan and about that book in particular. And they had suggestions for next year.

And Friday’s event with Nathaniel Philbrick himself marks the culmination of One Book New Canaan this year. What can people expect to hear at that event?

I suspect he’s going to talk about the work that he put in to write the book. It was also the National Book Award winner the year after it came out, so I’m sure he’ll talk about what it’s like to be the winner of the National Book Award. Why that book deserved to win it more than the others. It’s a pretty amazing when you think about it. There’s a lot of competition for that. He has since written other books. He wrote one on Yorktown. His current release is on Bunker Hill. So we would really like him to talk about the work he’s done on those books, as well. And he’s going to Skype with the kids earlier in the day, so I think that’s pretty fun.

What sort of suggestions have New Canaan kids come back with for a future One Book New Canaan?

Well I have to say they really liked nonfiction. Because some towns do [young adult] books, they even do children’s books, they do fiction. We selected nonfiction. We asked them, ‘What do you think you’d like to do if we do it again?’ And they said, ‘Oh we really like the nonfiction.’ They like the fact-based writing. The liked looking into how the research was done, what the primary research was for this particular book, which is interesting because one of the most important ones [resources] wasn’t even discovered until after 1970. And they suggested as a topic, something to do with World War II, which is interesting. First of all, there are so many books to choose and programming opportunities are endless. But one of the reasons they wanted to do that is because they were very aware that people who had lived through the war, their numbers are getting smaller and smaller, and they felt that was a real loss and something we should be able to take advantage of while we still can.

That’s great.

I thought that was good. I’m so glad the kids came, that was really nice.

Here’s some information about Philbrick (who’s appearance here is presented together with Elm Street Books), directly from a press release issued by New Canaan Library:

Nathaniel Philbrick is an award winning author and historian. He holds a BA in English from Brown University, Providence, RI, and an MA in America Literature from Duke University, Durham, NC. Early in his career Philbrick worked for Sailing World magazine; later he was a freelancer and wrote/edited several sailing books, including Yachting: A Parody (1984). After moving to Nantucket in 1986, he became interested in the history of the island and wrote Away Off Shore: Nantucket Island and Its People, which was released in a revised and updated edition in April, 2011. He was offered the opportunity to start Nantucket’s Egan Maritime Institute in 1995 and in 2000 published In the Heart of the Sea, followed by Sea of Glory in 2003, Mayflower in 2006, and The Last Stand in 2010. Philbrick’s Why Read Moby-Dick? was released in October 2011. His latest book, Bunker Hill:  A City, a Siege, a Revolution was released in April 2013. Nathaniel is married to Melissa Douthart Philbrick, who is Executive Director of Remain Nantucket; they have two grown children.