In a new twist on the traditional book club, Park City Library has started a new book club called Action Book Club. Action Book Club invites participants to read books on timely topics and take part in meaningful—and fun—service projects to benefit their communities.
This is reading and social engagement at its best.
Kate Mapp, Adult Services Librarian & Katrina Kmak, Youth Services Librarian
Park City Library’s Action Book Club theme changes each season. Each theme celebrates the joy of reading and the power of literacy.
Action Book Club was created by Little Free Library. They believe that books can inspire you to make the world a better place—starting in your own neighborhood!
How to Participate
The theme of Action Book Club for Winter is Moving Forward, focusing on celebrating growth, resilience, and well-being for all.
Step 1: Read a Book
Different from a typical book club, Action Book Club allows an individual to read a book by themselves or engage in reading with others. Further below is a list of recommended books for each age group. Select a book from our list or choose one of your own.
A tip for families: have each person in your family choose their own book, discuss your book at dinner time, and then take the second step together.
Step 2: Take Action
What is an Action Book Club without any action? Were you inspired by what you read? How can you, a friend or family member, or Park City move forward with growth, resilience, and well-being? We invite you to pick-up a free “action bag” from the Library, participate in a library event, or create your own action.
- Starting December 8th, pick up your Library action bag with supplies to check-in with someone and treat them to a hot chocolate gift.
- In December, donate new adult or kids socks when you visit the library. Clean, new socks can make a difference in the growth, well-being, and resilience of those in Park City who are facing homelessness. Proceeds support the Christian Center of Park City’s annual Operation Hope.
- Starting January 5th, pick up your library action bag with supplies to create your own journal.
- On January 12th, 12pm, Zoom with author & filmmaker Jennifer Pharr Davis to learn about her lessons of growth from her trail adventures. (Film Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX5VsY-29r0 & Zoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/94468583871)
- Starting February 2nd, pick up your library action bag to make a Valentine to give to someone.
Reading Recommendations for Children
Other students laugh when Rigoberto, an immigrant from Venezuela, introduces himself but later, he meets Angelina and discovers that he is not the only one who feels like an outsider.
Recommended for grades Kindergarten-2.
A little girl has a wonderful idea. With the help of her canine assistant, she is going to make the most magnificent thing! She knows just how it will look. She knows just how it will work. But making the most magnificent thing turns out to be harder than she thinks.
Recommended for grades Kindergarten-2.
After falling off the wall, Humpty Dumpty is very afraid of climbing up again, but is determined not to let fear stop him from being close to the birds.
Recommended for grades Pre-Kindergarten-2.
A young aspiring engineer must first conquer her fear of failure.
Recommended for grades Kindergarten-2.
Louie becomes angry when the story in which he appears is ruined by messes from jelly, peanut butter, and other things that do not belong in books.
Recommended for grades Kindergarten-2.
Lou and her friends are BRAVE adventurers. But one day, when they’re looking for a ship to play pirates in, Lou’s friend has an idea: The tree can be our ship! This is something new. Lou has never climbed a tree before, and she’s sure she can’t do it.
Recommended for Pre-Kindergarten-2.
An imaginary friend waits a long time to be imagined by a child and given a special name, and finally does the unimaginable–he sets out on a quest to find his perfect match in the real world.
Recommended for grades Pre-Kindergarten-2.
Sam and Dave are sure they will discover something exciting if they just keep digging their hole.
Recommended for grades Pre-Kindergarten-1.
When a young boy discovers a persistent problem, he avoids it until it gets so large that he must gather up the courage to face it.
Recommended for grades Pre-Kindergarten-1.
A nonfiction picture book compilation of the stories of 13 American women who persisted in overcoming obstacles and changing the world.
Recommended for grades Pre-Kindergarten-2.
Gerald the giraffe is too clumsy to dance with all the other animals at the Jungle Dance, until he finds the right music.
Recommended for grades Pre-Kindergarten-Kindergarten.
A boy is excluded from joining his friends’ pet club because of his unusual pet.
Recommended for grades Kindergarten-2.
A little boy wishes so much he could whistle.
Recommended for grades 1-2.
A child recognizes his own humanity, his capacity for doing harm and being harmed, his ability to feel joy and sadness, and his belief in hope and promise to keep learning.
Recommended for grades Pre-Kindergarten-3.
Relates how to find your courage and use it when life seems frightening or you start something new.
Recommended for grades Pre-Kindergarten-2.
Liam discovers a hidden garden and with careful tending spreads color throughout the gray city.
Recommended for grades 1-3.
Jabari is making a flying machine in his backyard! But it doesn’t work! Jabari is frustrated. Good thing Dad is there for a pep talk and his little sister, Nika, is there to assist, fairy wings and all.
Recommended for grades 2-4.
Reading Recommendations for Youth
The author recounts in graphic novel format her experiences with hearing loss at a young age, including using a bulky hearing aid, learning how to lip read, and determining her “superpower.”
Recommended for grades 2-6.
Hoping that if she wins a local beauty pageant her father will come home, Raymie practices twirling a baton and performing good deeds as she is drawn into an unlikely friendship with a drama queen and a saboteur.
Recommended for grades 4-7.
A brilliant, impatient fifth-grader with cerebral palsy discovers a technological device that will allow her to speak for the first time.
Recommended for grades 4-6.
An adaptation for young readers of a best-selling memoir follows the experiences of 14-year-old William Kamkwamba, who built a windmill out of junkyard scraps to bring electricity to his famine-stricken Malawi village.
Recommended for grades 4-7.
When the Sudanese civil war reaches his village in 1985, eleven-year-old Salva becomes separated from his family and must walk with other Dinka tribe members through southern Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya in search of safe haven. Based on the life of Salva Dut, who, after emigrating to America in 1996, began a project to dig water wells in Sudan.
Recommended for grades 5-8.
Has your child started this series yet… or have they read the illustrated versions? Begin your adventures with Harry Potter as he attends Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to learn how to perform magic – – and comes face to face with Lord Voldemort – – don’t say his name!
Recommended for grades 3-8.
After emigrating from China, ten-year-old Mia Tang’s parents take a job managing a rundown motel, despite the nasty owner, Mr. Yao, who exploits them, while she works the front desk and tries to cope with fitting in at her school.
Awarded many awards such as American Library Association’s Notable Children’s Books of 2019.
Recommended for grades 4-6.
Resolved to leave her home for good, a young runaway finds a job and a place to live before forming connections that alter her perspectives about life and herself.
Awarded American Library Association’s 2020 Notable Children’s Books.
Recommended for grades 5-7.
Thirteen-year-old Genesis tries again and again to lighten her black skin, thinking it is the root of her family’s troubles, before discovering reasons to love herself as is.
Awarded American Library Association’s 2020 Notable Children’s Books and Coretta Scott King’s Award for New Talent.
Recommended for grades 5-8.
A golden retriever narrates a hilarious, heart-tugging tale of a dog and his humans as he tries to keep his family together while everything around them falls apart.
Recommended for grades 3-6.
Reading Recommendations for Teens
A traumatic event in the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda’s freshman year of high school.
Also available as a graphic novel.
Recommended for grades 8-12.
After a plane crash, thirteen-year-old Brian spends fifty-four days in the wilderness, learning to survive initially with only the aid of a hatchet given him by his mother, and learning also to survive his parents’ divorce.
Recommended for grades 6-12.
Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.
Recommended for grades 7-10.
Three brothers struggle to stay together after their parents’ death, as they search for an identity among the conflicting values of their adolescent society in which they find themselves “outsiders.”
Recommended for grades 7-9.
While in a coma following an automobile accident that killed her parents and younger brother, seventeen-year-old Mia, a gifted cellist, weights whether to live with her grief or join her family in death.
Recommended for grades 9-12.
Sixteen-year-old Willowdean wants to prove to everyone in her small Texas town that she is more than just a fat girl, so, while grappling with her feelings for a co-worker who is clearly attracted to her, Will and some other misfits prepare to compete in the beauty pageant her mother runs.
Recommended for grades 9-12.
Reading Recommendations for Adults
Viewed with suspicion in the aftermath of a tragedy, a beautiful hermit who has survived for years in a marsh becomes targeted by unthinkable forces.
Jennifer Pharr Davis, a record holder of the FKT (fastest known time) on the Appalachian Trail, reveals the secrets and habits behind endurance as she chronicles her incredible accomplishments in the world of endurance hiking, backpacking, and trail running.
When her volatile, former POW father impulsively moves the family to mid-1970s Alaska to live off the land, young Leni and her mother are forced to confront the dangers of their lack of preparedness in the wake of a dangerous winter season.
The best-selling author of Bad Feminist presents a searingly frank memoir of food, weight, self-image and learning how to feed one’s hunger in healthy ways, drawing on the popular essays of her long-running Tumblr blog to illuminate the challenges of navigating the boundaries between self-comfort and self-care.
A socially awkward, routine-oriented loner teams up with a bumbling IT guy from her office to assist an elderly accident victim, forging a friendship that saves all three from lives of isolation and secret unhappiness.
Traces the author’s experiences as a child born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, describing her participation in her family’s paranoid stockpiling activities and her resolve to educate herself well enough to earn an acceptance into a prestigious university and the unfamiliar world beyond.
Two leading spiritual masters share their hard-won wisdom about living with joy even in the face of adversity, sharing personal stories and teachings about the science of profound happiness and the daily practices that anchor their emotional and spiritual lives.
Embrace Hygge (pronounced hoo-ga) and become happier with this definitive guide to the Danish philosophy of comfort, togetherness, and well-being.