2025 National Book Festival & Great Reads Selections!

The 2025 National Book Festival is Saturday, September 6, 2025!

Discover Great Reads from Great Places with the Roadmap to Reading at the 2025 Library of Congress National Book Festival! The 56 Affiliate Centers for the Book each selected one book for Young Readers and one for Adult Readers to celebrate the people and places around our nation. Visit each stop on the Roadmap to Reading in Hall D of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. from 9 a.m.- 8 p.m., or create your own National Book Festival experience with the Library of Congress online by engaging in virtual author conversations, listening to a podcast, reading the blog, and more!

For a link to the author lineup of more than 90 authors at the festival, click here.

The Center for the Book at the New Hampshire State Library has selected the book, Pitch Perfect and Persistent!: The Musical Debut of Amy Cheney Beach by Caitlin DeLems as our 2025 selection for Young Readers. 

Amy Marcy Cheney was born in Henniker, New Hampshire on September 5, 1867. By the age of four, Amy had composed three waltzes, despite the absence of a piano. Amy began formal piano lessons with her mother at age six, and by age eight the family had moved to Chelsea, Massachusetts to further her musical education. During the course of her lifetime, Amy accomplished many musical firsts, including being the first American woman to compose and publish a symphony. In 1944, Amy Cheney Beach died and is buried with her husband, Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach outside of Boston, Massachusetts.

The Center for the Book at the New Hampshire State Library has selected the book, To Anyone Who Ever Asks: the Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse by Howard Fishman as our 2025 selection for Adult Readers.

Elizabeth Eaton “Connie” Converse was born in Laconia, New Hampshire on August 3, 1924, and raised in Concord, New Hampshire. She attended Concord High School, where she was valedictorian. Converse attended Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts for two years before moving to New York City where she began writing songs. In August 1974, Converse left her family home in search of a new life and was not seen or heard from again. Despite some small success early on in her music career, Connie’s music was not recognized until the 21st century with the release of a song compilation and the publication of this biography. 

Passing the Torch

Mary setting up at NBF2003
with a Junior League Volunteer

On Monday evening, May 5, 2003 the NH State Library hosted a reception to open the Center for the Book at the New Hampshire State Library. Among the honored guests at that event were John Cole, Director of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress; Marie Harris, NH Poet Laureate at the time; and the NH authors Tomie dePaola, John Harrigan, and Rebecca Rule.  Katie McDonough was the Director of the NH Center for the Book at its founding. 

By the fall of 2003 we had kicked-off our first Ladybug Picture Book Award; organized our first year of Letters About Literature (a student writing competition that the Library of Congress unfortunately stopped supporting in 2019); and represented the Granite State at the first National Book Festival. 

By that time I had become the Director of the NH Center. In the 20+ years since then we have done a lot of great projects, I have attended more National Book Festivals than I care to count, and I have worked with an amazing group of writers, librarians, readers, and Directors from Centers for the Book throughout the country. It has been fun, educational, and occasionally exhausting. 

After all these years I decided, and former State Librarian Michael York agreed with me, that the time has come for someone new to take over running the NH Center. Luckily, Felicia Martin was ready and willing to become our 3rd Director. Mike appointed her Director before he retired.

Felicia has been Deputy Director of the NH Center since 2023; Chair of the Ladybug Picture Book Award since Ann Hoey's retirement in 2017; and a regular contributor to the Center's blog for many years prior to that. The Center is in very capable hands, and I will be here at the State Library serving as "Director Emeritus" of the Center which means I will be helping Felicia out in whatever ways she decides are helpful.

Thanks to everyone who has helped me with the Center for the Book all these years. I couldn't have done it without you!

State Librarian Michael York at NBF2003

2024 National Book Festival!

 The 2024 National Book Festival is this Saturday, August 24th! 

Discover Great Reads from Great Places with the Roadmap to Reading at the 2024 Library of Congress National Book Festival. The 56 Affiliate Centers for the Book each selected one book for Young Readers and one for Adult Readers to celebrate the people and places around our nation. Visit each stop on the Roadmap to Reading in Hall D of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. from 8:30 a.m.- 6 p.m., or create your own National Book Festival experience with the Library of Congress online by engaging in virtual author conversations, listening to a podcast, reading the blog, and more!

For a link to the online events schedule, click here.

 

The Center for the Book at the New Hampshire State Library is pleased to announce that the book, The McNifficents by Amy Makechnie is our 2024 choice for Young Readers!

 

 

 

The Center for the Book at the New Hampshire State Library is pleased to announce that the book, The Hills At Home by Nancy Clark is our 2024 choice for Adult Readers!

Help us celebrate our amazing New Hampshire authors Amy Makechnie & Nancy Clark, as well as the many other authors from around the nation this weekend! If you're attending the festival, make sure to look for the New Hampshire booth where NH Center for the Book staff will be promoting these great books!

Q & A: Guy Lamolinara, Head of the LOC Center for the Book

The Library of Congress blog recently featured a Q&A with Guy Lamolinara, the Head of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress! 

Working with and learning from Guy is always a delight for us here at the NH Center for the Book. His cheerful demeanor and enthusiasm about Center for the Book affiliate projects and ideas is always warmly welcomed and appreciated.

Click here for the full Q&A with Guy.

To find out more about the Library of Congress Center for the Book and its 56 affiliates, click here.

2023 National Book Festival

The 2023 National Book Festival is this Saturday, August 12th! 

Discover Great Reads from Great Places with the Roadmap to Reading at the 2023 Library of Congress National Book Festival. The 56 Affiliate Centers for the Book selected one book for Young Readers and one for Adult Readers to celebrate the people and places around our nation. Visit each stop on the Roadmap to Reading in Hall D of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. from 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., or create your own National Book Festival experience with the Library of Congress online by engaging in virtual author conversations, listening to a podcast, reading the blog, and more! Whether we are near or far, “Everyone Has a Story” and we hope you will join us in celebration this weekend!

For a link to the online events schedule, click here.

The New Hampshire Center for the Book at the New Hampshire State Library has selected the book, Inky's Amazing Escape by Sy Montgomery as our 2023 choice for Young Readers.

 

 

The New Hampshire Center for the Book at the New Hampshire State Library has selected the book, The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery as our 2023 choice for Adult Readers.

 

Sy Montgomery is the author of 34 books for children and adults. She has won many awards and honors for her wide range of books about every animal you could imagine! Sy lives in Hancock, New Hampshire with her husband, writer Howard Mansfield, her Border collie and a flock of chickens

View interviews with selected authors from the Eastern 1 Region of the U.S., including an interview between the NH Center for the Book's Deputy Director Felicia Martin and author Sy Montgomery here.

Help us celebrate Sy Montgomery and her amazing books, as well as the many other authors from around the nation this weekend!

NHLA Presentation

View from the Conference Room

The NH Center for the Book staff had the privilege of presenting at the 2023 NHLA Spring Conference last week. 

The slides from our presentation, which include several website links are now available (as a pdf document) on our website.

Felicia Martin, Deputy Director

Felicia Martin

 I am very pleased to announce that State Librarian Michael York has appointed Felicia Martin as Deputy Director of the Center for the Book at the NH State Library. Felicia brings creativity, wide knowledge of NH books, enthusiasm, and a fresh perspective to the work of the Center.

Many of you may know Felicia from her work as Chair of the Ladybug Picture Book committee and her book-of-the-week posts on Book Notes.  She is also the Acquisitions Librarian here at the State Library.

Over the next several months Felicia and I will be working together to bring her up to speed on the various projects of the Center. Please join me in congratulating her on this new role!

 

NH's 2022 Route One Read

Route One Reads is a virtual reading trip along Route One. For this year's summer road trip the Center for the Book in each state along Route One was asked to select a work of "literary fiction"

According to Joyce Saricks in Readers’ Advisory Service in the Public Library:

Literary fiction is “complex, literate, multilayered novels that wrestle with universal dilemmas.” Appeal factors for LF include a character-centered story (as opposed to a plot-driven one) and very strong character development, both in the main character and in secondary characters.

For your summer reading pleasure we selected a title that we felt checked off all the boxes for literary fiction: The Den, by Abi Maxwell. 

With echoes of The Scarlet Letter, this is a luminous, hypnotic story of youth, sex, and power that tells of two young women who find themselves ostracized from the same small New England community for the same reasons–though they are separated by 150 years. 

In addition to The Den, Abi Maxwell is the author of the novel Lake People. Her memoir, One Day I’ll Grow Up, I’ll Be A Beautiful Woman, will be published in the summer of 2023. She lives with her husband and daughter in New Hampshire.

Letters About Literature - The Video

In NH Letters About Literature is coordinated by the NH Center for the Book.
The NH deadline is December 9, 2017.

This awesome video was created by the Texas State Library which is working with the Texas Library Association to help Texans recover from recent hurricanes.

NH's Route 1 Read 2017

Route One Reads is a virtual reading trip along Route One. The Center for the Book in each state along Route One was asked to select a biography for adult readers.
We wanted a biography that told the story of a native life in the Granite State. We had lots of books to  choose from, check out past book-of-the-week biographies for a sample, and ultimately decided to feature Kookooland, Gloria Norris's story of her gritty urban upbringing in Northern New England's largest city. If this story rings a bell for you it may be because you read the Calvin Trillin article about Norris's extended family and their problems in the New Yorker in 1978.

It's the 1960s in Manchester, New Hampshire and Gloria Norris is growing up in the projects with her family. A photo might show a happy, young family, but things aren't as they appear. Jimmy's a wiseguy who relies on charm, wit and an unyielding belief that he's above the law; and his youngest daughter, Gloria, is just like him. Or at least, she knows that she needs to stay on his good side. When an unspeakable act of violence shakes her to her core, Gloria's fiery determination takes shape and she sets herself on a path away from the cycle of violence whirling around her. That path will eventually take her to NYC where she will work as an assistant to film directors Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, and Woody Allen and then to Los Angeles where she is now a screenwriter and independent producer.

NH's Route 1 Read

A Project of the East Coast
Centers for the Book

Route One Reads is a virtual reading trip along Route One. The Center for the Book in each state along Route One was asked to select a travel-related title.
While Route One will only take you to a few New Hampshire towns (it runs along the seacoast) we decided to feature a book that will take you on a trip throughout the entire Granite State.

Sue Anne Bottomley is a New Hampshire artist who decided to visit every one of the 234 towns (this includes 13 that are incorporated as cities) in New Hampshire and draw a picture there. This project took her two years and the resulting drawings were published in the book Colorful Journey: An Artist's Adventure: Drawing Every Town in New Hampshire (Portsmouth, NH: Piscataqua Press, 2014).

As you read your way along Route 1 don't miss the beautiful trip along New Hampshire's seacoast.
 

Annual Center for the Book Idea Exchange

I got back today from the annual State Center for the Book Idea Exchange meeting. Hosted by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress this meeting provides the directors of all the state Centers for the Book an opportunity to get together and talk about the projects we do and to share ideas and experiences and to help each other with problems our centers may be having. This year there was a lot of discussion about book festivals, state book awards, literary maps, and NEA Big Read projects. We also talk about national projects that centers organize at a state level, like the National Book Festival, Letters About Literature, and River of Words.

This year, for the first time, several of the center directors got together to have a book discussion dinner after the meeting. We read and discussed The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. and were lucky enough to have Chris Higashi of the Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library join us for the discussion and share with us the excellent Reading Group Toolbox for the Works of Jhumpa Lahiri that they created for their 2007 Seattle Reads project.

Blogs and the Centers for the Book

When I decided that the NH Center for the Book should have a blog I started by looking around to see who else had done such and thing and what did and didn't work for them. There is a listserv for the directors of the 51 state Centers for the Book (I am counting D.C. as a state -- I think it should be one) and I started there. I heard back from a few people who said they don't have blogs but would like me to share what I learned. So, here it is.
I discovered a couple of blogs that relate to state centers for the book but none that seem to be entirely about or published by state Centers. It appears that New Hampshire is the first Center for the Book to have its very own blog.

Here are some of the related blogs I found:

• Fairfax County Public Library has both a blog and an affiliate Virginia Center for the Book (thanks to Katie Strotman for telling me about this one). Their statement on why and how they moderate comments is very well stated.
• The Indiana State Library has a blog with archives going back June 2004 which includes the Indiana Center for the Book as a category.
• The Oklahoma Department of Libraries has a link on its website to a blog called Reading Oklahoma which had interesting book-related stuff on it, though its connection (if any) to the Oklahoma Center for the Book was not clear.

This blog, like many, is a work in progress. It will evolve and change as technology and the NH Center for the Book do. It is open for comments from anyone (they will be moderated to avoid spam and such) and I hope you will take moment to tell me what you think of this latest experiment in communication.