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Community Responses: What you told us about the project

These are the written responses the Library has received about the project and the programs. Responses were collected on the evaluation form included in the Resource Guide. Answers may have been edited for clarity and some duplicate answers were combined.

How did you hear about the Reading: Bridge to a Wider World project?

• At our book club at the West Duluth Branch Library
• Newspapers (Duluth News Tribune and Budgeteer)
• From my child's teacher at Marshall School.
• Friends

Click here for the complete list of responses

What caused you to participate?

• Love book discussions and wanted to read To Kill a Mockingbird.
• Because I think it's such a fantastic idea for a whole city to read a book together.
• The tidal pull of so many people reading the same book drew me in.
• Read it in school - thought it would be fun to re-read.
• Liked Lee's story and wanted to learn more about the author.

Click here for the complete list of responses

Where did you get your copy of To Kill a Mockingbird?

Library - 31	Bookstore - 46	Home - 21	Other - 11
			Wal-Mart Video rental Friend Came with our home school curriculum School

Did you read and discuss the book with friends, in a book discussion group or just by yourself?

By myself - 20	Other:
Book discussion group - 41	With other teachers. I teach the book to 9th graders. At school Green Room lecture. Film. With a professional group Our church (First Unitarian) chose it for our April Book Club discussion. Barnes and Noble comparison with Duluth lynching. With student in a high school
With family or friends - 19

Were the materials in the Resource Guide helpful in your reading and understanding of the book?

Yes - 67

No - 9

How?

• Made me think about elements I did not pay much thought to in initial reading.
• The questions were thought provoking. I used them as I read the story. They expanded my knowledge and appreciation of the novel.
• Gave the discussion background information and focus.
• it helped me understand who Scout really is.
• Timelines helped place the events in history.

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How did the book affect you?

• Riding home from the Ordway (and reading it) I said to my daughter, "I'm coming to the courtroom when Reverend Sykes said, 'Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father is passin.' " We both teared up. A shared memory! Time did not dull our memories of the book.
• It caused me to reflect on my Southern heritage, and to confront the racism in my own family members and myself.
• At the West Duluth Library group discussion we found the story applies to our generation just as it did to the 1930s
• It made me think of all its valuable life lessons - specifically what one person can do to effect positive community change.
• I love reading fiction. This is a favorite novel. Reading allows me to get into someone else's shoes and learn from them.
• I was saddened that society still has so far to go to achieve justice and end racism!

Click here for the complete list of responses

Why was To Kill a Mockingbird a good selection for this area-reading project?
The evaluation form asked if this book was a good selection. No-one answered that it was not.

• A universal book. Just the right length. Appealing story that kept my attention. Timely and relevant.
• The Duluth lynchings, of current interest to the community, strike a renewed interest in Mockingbird.
• Made me think about how I discriminate against those who are different than me.
• Couldn't have been better! It appeals to all ages. It is a storyteller's story. It teaches many lessons. Appeals to men and women.
• Perfect. Such broad appeal and so many eternally relevant themes
• Deals with important issues in the complex way that they deserve but, especially in Duluth with its serious lack of diversity.

Click here for the complete list of responses

Do you have a title to suggest for another Reading: Bridge to a Wider World project?

• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
• A Painted House by John Grisham
• The Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
• The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
• Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer or Letters from the Earth by Mark Twain
• The Pilot's Wife or The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve
• Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
• The Cape Ann by Faith Sullivan
• Range of Motion by Elizabeth Berg
• All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
• The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
• Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
• An American Requiem - James Carroll
• Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
• The Diary of Anne Frank
• Waiting by Ha Jin
• perhaps a book dealing with Israel/Palestine or Islam
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
• The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men or East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• Night by Elie Weisel
• Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
• The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• Barbarians at the Gate by Bryan Burrough
• The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
• Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
• My Antonia by Willa Cather
• Love Medicine or The Antelope Wife by Louise Erdrich
• Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
• A biography of Beatrix Potter
• Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy

10/24/05
Duluth Public Library, 520 W. Superior St., Duluth, MN 55802