Program takes classics to the people

FRESNO, Calif. – As the sleepy morning crowd shuffles up to the glass counter at the Krispy Kreme shop, a lilting voice draws them away from the mouthwatering display of doughnuts.

Sitting at one of the plastic tables, a box of deep-fried goodies and a hot pot of coffee at hand, Sandy Lindley reads aloud from “To Kill a Mockingbird,” helping kick off a month’s worth of programs meant to take the classic novel where the readers are – retirement homes, downtown bars, museums and, yes, even doughnut shops.

“It’s awesome they’re doing this, because libraries have such a cold feel about them,” said Kelly Rothchild, 26, who was in the store to get breakfast for her co-workers. “This brings it out to people.”

The National Endowment for the Arts funded the effort after a recent survey showed a “huge crisis” in reading among Americans.

“Reading is declining in every age group, cultural group, every region and income level,” said NEA chairman Dana Gioia. “Unless something is done, we will continue to see those declines.”

To rekindle the interest in books, the NEA gave grants of up to $40,000 to three public libraries, including Fresno’s, and seven book centers from Enterprise, Ore., to Hunstville, Ala.

As part of a pilot program, the towns chose from four books – Harper Lee’s “Mockingbird,” Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” and Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” – and came up with ways to connect their communities to the classics.

Fresno, at the center of California’s farm belt, is a particularly challenging place to jump-start the fight against slumping readership.

It has nearly half a million residents and a renowned creative writing program at the state university campus. But like much of the surrounding rural landscape, it relies largely on the low-wage farming jobs and loses many of its educated residents to opportunities elsewhere.

“We wanted to make sure the program could work as broadly as possible, so we wanted to test it in more challenging markets,” said Gioia, who hopes to see the program expand to 100 cities nationwide by next fall.

Besides the 24-hour reading marathon at the doughnut shop, the program will offer a blues tribute to the book, legal panels on the impact of controversial cases on communities, and lectures on portrayals of race in American film, as well as film and theater versions of the novel.