By Cate Meister
Huntington Beach Reads One Book (HBReads) chose “The Distance Between Us” by Reyna Grande as the reading selection for this year’s program. HBReads, a program designed to engage students in reading, will host a virtual author visit on March 23 at 6 p.m.
District librarian Elizabeth Taireh proposed “The Distance Between Us,” a memoir about Grande’s experience growing up with her grandmother in Mexico and later her immigration to join her father in the US. Grande not only grew up in Southern California, but is a graduate of University of California, Santa Cruz, offering a local connection for readers in Huntington Beach Union High School District (HBUHSD).
Taireh proposed a young readers’ edition of the book in the interest of accessibility for all readers, but she noted that students are welcome to read the full version.
“I’m hoping that somebody will learn or pick up something that they just did, they wouldn’t have done,” Taireh said. “Even if people just watched the author speak and…learned something, [they] gained something from that.”
While HBReads is a community organization, they’ve worked closely with Taireh in the past to gear their program towards high schoolers. To ensure this goal is being met, books chosen each year must be written about diverse characters and settings, non-fiction and fewer than $15. HBReads selections are also typically non-fiction.
Each year, HBReads culminates in a visit from the author of the book, which is typically an in-person event. But with the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, HBReads has elected to hold its second virtual author visit. Taireh also discussed the financial aspect of the choice to remain virtual for the visit.
“It’s significantly more expensive to have an author come and speak in person than it is via Zoom…We kept it [on] Zoom because…getting revenue in to even support this program is not as easy right now,” Taireh said.
This year’s program also will focus solely on the author visit itself. The 2021 program, which featured George Takei’s “They Called Us Enemy,” had events like poetry readings and student discussions. Taireh felt this choice might better match the time and energy of students now that HBUHSD has returned to in-person, traditional bell schedule learning.
Students can elect to read the book before the author visits so that they can ask questions they might have, but Taireh emphasized that anyone interested can attend the event, not just those who have read the book.
“These stories that are from modern authors are living on, and students get a chance to read something that might hit them a bit differently than traditional classroom books,” Taireh said.
