The HPPR Radio Readers Book Club is an on-air, on-line community of readers exploring themes of interest to those who live and work on the High Plains.
It’s time for the 2024 Fall Read – Through the Eyes of a Child,featuring four selected books Alice in Wonderland by Sir John Tenniel, Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeii, The Blue Book of Nebo by Manon Steffan Ros; and Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds.Click here for the full book list including profiles of book leaders for the series. Or to invite others to the read click here to print a set of bookmarks complete with instructions for creating Radio Readers BookBytes .
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Become a Radio Reader! · Contribute a Radio Readers BookByte from the convenience of your home or office!Click here for basic directions. Worried about recording at home? Click here for the HPPR Radio Readers Tips for Recording, or, if you’re a techie and want a deeper dive into recording, click here .
· Weigh in on the themes or suggest books for upcoming seasons! Join our email group by contacting Kathleen Holt at kholt@hppr.org.
Have a favorite Radio Readers BookByte from the past? Download materials from previous HPPR Radio Readers Book Club seasons by scrolling back through the archive below; you can also search the site for content at the top of this page. _________________________________________________________
HPPR's Radio Readers Book Club is made possible in part by generous gifts from Lon Frahm (Colby, Kansas), Lynn Boitano (Edmond, Oklahoma, and the late Lynne Hewes (Cimarron, Kansas) — and, of course, by your generous support. To help this station further our regional features, join the mission with a pledge of support. Your membership to High Plains Public Radio makes this series possible. Click to give, and THANK YOU!
Well, Radio Readers, how about this fabulously curious Fall 2024 book series “Through the Eyes of a Child”? What a fascinating stretch of reading over the past several months, right? Alice in Wonderland, Everything Sad is Untrue, The Blue Book of Nebo, and Long Way Down: our reading journey this fall has immersed us in various settings, genres, and cultures.
My name is Deana Craighead and I am the Curator of Art at Panhandle Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas. In the spring of 2024, the museum opened Dali’s Wonderland, an exhibition that features a limited-edition copy of Alice in Wonderland from the personal library of local philanthropist Sybil B. Harrington, illustrated by the artist Salvador Dali.
This is Nicole English for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club for the 2024 Fall Read.This is a discussion of the book, Long Way Down written in prose by Jason Reynolds, and for those who enjoy visuals with their prose, there is the graphic novel version, beautifully illustrated by Danica Novgorodoff.
This is Whitney Hodgin from the historic Cimarron Hotel for HPPR’S Radio Readers BookBytes.When I encounter people with strong personalities, I often consider what it would be like if the two of us were stuck in a broken-down elevator.
Hello everybody, this is Miriam Scott from Amarillo Texas with my last Radio Readers BookByte on Jason Reynold’s Long Way Down.We are still on the elevator with Will and the ghosts of Buck and Dani.
Hello, Radio Readers. I’m Jane Holwerda in Dodge City, Kansas, about the fourth and last book in our Fall 2024 series, “Through the Eyes of a Child.” Published in 2017, Long Way Down is the work of North American author Jason Reynolds, recipient of Newbury and Caldecott literary awards for his children’s and young adult books.
Hello again, this is Miriam Scott from Amarillo Texas.Last time I shared with you that in our book Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, the protagonist Will, a 15-year-old boy, is on his way to exact revenge on who he believes killed his brother Shawn.
Hello everybody, this is Miriam Scott from Amarillo Texas. I am a wife, a mother, and a priest. And I love to read. The genre of poetry has a special place in my heart. The absence of words, the unsaid words in between verses hold meaning in an almost soothing way.
Thank you for joining us on the High Plains Public Radio Station. My name is Jessica Sadler and I am a Science Teacher, STEAM facilitator, and coach in Olathe, Kansas. I am here with the other book leaders to discuss Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds.
More of Seven Books Plus – A Reading List to Save Democracy – Part IIIby Kansas Reflector columnist Max McCoy. This is a list of seven books to save democracy, one reader at a time.
Four of Seven Books – A Reading List to Save Democracy – Part II by Kansas Reflector columnist Max McCoy. This is a list of seven books to save democracy, one reader at a time.
One day last week, I went to a coffee shop downtown to meet a friend. I had a hardback book tucked under my arm to give to the friend, a historian who shares my interest in the twisting and sometimes tortured arc of American democracy.
Hi everyone. This is Andrea Elise coming to you from Amarillo, Texas, to talk about the memoir, Call Me Debbie.If you have never heard the name “Deborah Voight,” you are probably in the majority.
MIA – Hi, my name is Mia Mendez and I’m 13 years old and I’m from Cimarron, Kansas. I recently read the book Barefoot Dreams of Petra Luna by Alda P Dobbs and her second book continuing on to that story The Other Side of the River.
Hello, this is Michelle Reid for the HPPR Radio Readers Summer Book Club. Today I’m here with my granddaughter Claire to talk about one of her favorite books.
Hello, this is Michelle Reid for the HPPR Radio Readers Summer Book Club. Today I’m here with my granddaughter Emma to talk about one of her favorite books. Good morning!
This is James Kenyon for the High Plains Radio Readers Book Summers Reading List. I am an active reader and writer. I authored Golden Rule Days. It is a history of the former high schools in all 105 counties in Kansas.
I am Tracy Million Simmons, owner of Meadowlark Press. As a small regional press specializing in stories from the Midwest, I’d like to take this moment to introduce you to a Meadowlark book. One of my all-time favorites is Gravedigger’s Daughter: Vignettes from a Small Kansas Town, by Cheryl Unruh.
I’m Emilie Moll, editorial assistant for Meadowlark Press, for the High Plains Public Radio Summer Reading List. Our small, independent press specializes in stories from the Midwest, and today I'll be talking about a Meadowlark Book, I’ve Been Fighting This War Within Myself by Antonio Sanchez-Day.
It is with deep sadness that we share the passing of PJ Pronger of Amarillo. PJ was a Book Leader for the 2020 Spring Read – Radio Waves and a contributor of Radio Reader BokBytes. We appreciated his insight as well as his eloquence. The HPPR Radio Readers Book Club is an on-air, on-line community of readers exploring themes of interest to those who live and work on the High Plains. We will miss PJ in that community and thank his family for sharing him with us.
The HPPR Radio Readers Book Club is sad to learn of the passing of Mike Strong of Hays and Kansas City. For more than five years, Mike has been a steady source of Radio Readers BookBytes. We continue to air his thoughts as a tribute to our friend and as a thank you to Mike for sharing his insight, eloquence and broad talent. Radio Readers across the High Plains will long remember you, Mike. Rest well.
Hello, Radio Readers! I’m Jane Holwerda and – believe it or not –it’s time to wrap up this most incredible of Spring Reads, “Water, Water, Neverwhere.”
To end this set of readings with Plainwater by Anne Carson feels perfect. If not perfect, well, it still feels. Carson, once described by Bruce Hainley as “a philosopher of heartbreak” doesn’t just mix genres in her works but calls into question linguistic and cultural bedrocks that inform our reading of the continuity of human experiences.
I’m Pat Tyrer from Canyon, Texas for the High-Plains-Public-Radio-Readers Book Club.Today I’ll be sharing some poetry, all tangentially connected to our spring theme of “Water, Water, Neverwhere.” I’ve included poems from famous poets as well as those from poets on the High Plains.
Hello, Radio Readers! I’m Jane Holwerda from Dodge City, Kansas, thinking about Plainwater, a multilayered work from early in the career of Anne Carson, a writer pegged as a contender for a Nobel.
I’m Pat Tyrer from Canyon, Texas for the High-Plains-Public-Radio-Readers Book Club.Today I’ll be sharing some poetry, all tangentially connected to our spring theme of “Water, Water, Neverwhere.”
Hello, Radio Readers! Jane Holwerda from Dodge City, Kansas, here to reflect on Anne Carson’s Plainwater, an eclectic collection of essays and poetry – and just in time for April, National Poetry Month.
Hello HPPR listeners. I’m Andrea Elise in Amarillo, and I am excited to tell you about a poem called “A Song of Winter Weather.”Isn’t it fun to stumble upon an author who, though widely published, is new to you?
Through essay and poetry, Carson envisions a present-day interview with a seventh-century BC poet, and offers varied lecturettes. She imagines the muse of a fifteenth-century painter attending a phenomenology conference in Italy.
This is Mike Strong, in Hays, for HPPR. The book is “Bewilderment” by Richard Powers.The first text in Richard Powers’ “Bewilderment” is a quote from Rachel Carson. It took me back a few years. When Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” was published in September 1962 my parents purchased a copy for my 15th birthday two months later.
This is Leslie VonHolten with another Radio Readers Book Byte.Radio Readers listeners will know that I absolutely am not a science fiction reader. The minute someone time travels, or gets on a spaceship, or has a conversation with some other kind of sentient life force not from Earth—well, I am out. No thank you.
I’m Pat Tyrer from Canyon, Texas for the High-Plains-Public-Radio-Readers Book Club.The novel I’ll be talking about today is Richard Power’s 2021 novel Bewilderment.
Hello, this is Shelley Armitage for Radio Readers Book Club --We used to talk to animals, didn’t we? No, I don’t mean the family dog and cat. I mean bears, cougars, ravens, eagles. And they talked to us. But something happened when we began to see them as fair sport, trophies, fit for feed yards or timeable milking machines.
This is Mike Strong, in Hays, for HPPR. The book is “Bewilderment” by Richard Powers. When we come into our narrator's story, he is a widower with his autistic, talented, brilliant, highly active, nine-year old son. They are on a trip to find a dark sky to look at the stars through their telescope.
This is Leslie VonHolten from the High Plains of Kansas with another HPPR Radio Readers Book Byte.At night, Theo and his young son Robin, the main characters of Bewilderment by Richard Powers, travel through the outer reaches of known space with their imaginations.
Hello, Radio Readers. I’m Jane Holwerda from Dodge City, Kansas, ruminating on Richard Powers’ 2021 Bewildered, a work of fiction currently pushing my thinking on the scope of nature and the natural world.
Hello! I’m Cheryl Dunn in Lincoln, NE for HPPR’s Radio Readers Fall Book Club.The book Bewilderment by Richard Powers was one that I just couldn’t get through. I picked it up multiple times and would read several pages and then would have to put it down again.
I would like to talk today about Sylvia Plath’s poem, “Stars Over the Dordogne.”Even if one does not know of Sylvia’s devastating history of depression and eventual suicide, it does not take long to realize the depth of sadness in her beautiful poem.
“The world is too much with us; late and soon,Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—Little we see in Nature that is ours;We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!...”
Hello, Radio Readers! I’m Jane Holwerda for High Plains Public Radio. About our 2023 Summer Read. You know, every week in June and through most of July, Radio Readers have talked about books worthy of sharing, and now we have an incredible book list. Do you have time for one more recommendation?
Hello, my name is Andrea Elise and I live in Amarillo, Texas. I just finished reading the excellent short story “Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield, published in the author’s 1922 collection of stories called The Garden Party.
Hi, I am Holly Mercer, Library Director at Dodge City Community College. I selected the book Poverty, By America written by Matthew Desmond because I read his first book Evicted when it was published in 2016 and found it to be intriguing.
My summer reading recommendation is not a book, but a magazine—which is also, in so many ways, a community. The New Territory calls itself “an autobiography of the Lower Midwest,”—the Lower Midwest being Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Northwest Arkansas, Southern Illinois, and Iowa. But in their words, quote, “When it feels right, we color outside those border lines.”
Hello, I’m Sara Crow, co-owner of Crow & Co. Books in Hutchinson. I’ll be talking about The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, by Michael Finkel, a true crime story about one of the world’s most successfully notorious art thieves in history, Stéphane Breitwieser.
Hello, HPPR Book Club members. My name is Andrea Elise and I live in Amarillo, TX.I just finished reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s extraordinary memoir, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith.
Hello, my name is Andrea Elise and I live in Amarillo, TX. I just finished reading Rosemary Brown’s compelling memoir, Unfinished Symphonies, published in 1971.
I’m Pat Tyrer from Canyon, Texas for the High-Plains-Public-Radio-Readers Book Club. Over the past few years, I’ve noticed that some of the most provocative and enjoyable writing is being published in the genre of young adult novels. Such is the case with Daniel Nayeri’s Everything Sad is Untrue (A True Story). In fact, I was so affected by this book that I have bought and given away several copies.
Let’s turn to the book that is the subject of this review: Ann Nepolitano’s Hello Beautiful. I read – or rather devoured – this book shortly after it was released in March of this year due to an ordering error.
In case you missed it, the culmination of the Spring Read went down on Sunday, May 7th with book leaders and community partners discussing the breadth of books from the latest series, "In Touch with the World." Click the audio link at the op of this page to hear it in full.
The HPPR Radio Readers Book Club’s 2023 Spring Read – In Touch with the World ends on Sunday, May 7, 2023, with a two-hour, live book discussion. Since January, 27 contributors have posted 51 Radio Readers BookBytes covering 23 books from 14 countries.
Hello, friends. I’m Jane Holwerda for High Plains Public Radio Radio Readers with a friendly FYI: the end is near for this most incredible Spring 2023 Read, “In Touch with the World…At Home on the High Plains.”
Thank you for joining us for the High Plains Public Radio Readers Book Club. I’m Jessica Sadler, a Science Teacher and STEAM facilitator in Olathe, Kansas. I am here with the other book leaders to discuss Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff.
Once Were Warriors is a brutal story of a Maori family living in poverty in New Zealand. The author, Alan Duff, is also Maori, and he spent part of his childhood in low-income housing.
Our final book, the fourteenth in our series is Once Were Warriors, Alan Duff's harrowing vision New Zealand's indigenous people some two hundred years after the English conquest.
Welcome, this is Mary Scott with a Radio Readers BookByte for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club. I recently finished “I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban” written by Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb.
Hi, I’m Marcy McKay from Amarillo, author of the award-winning novel, Pennies from Burger Heaven. I’m excited to be a Radio Reader for High Plains Public Radio’s Book Club. The book I chose for In Touch with The World was I Am Malala, by Malala Yousufzai. She’s the girl who stood up for education in Pakistan and was shot by the Taliban in 2012 when she was just 15 years old.
Hello, Radio Readers; this is Kim Perez, and I am coming to you from Hays with a few thoughts about the book I Am Malala for the spring 2023 Radio Readers Book Club.
Hello, Radio Readers. Jane Holwerda here from Dodge City, Kansas. It’s almost the end of our Fall 2022 read, Rural Life Revisited. And of course, we’re gearing up for our on-air program in mid-November to revisit the ways our perceptions of rural life may have been challenged by our conversations about Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg OH, Annie Proulx’s That Old Ace in the Hole, and Winfred Gallagher’s How the Post Office Created America.
As the United States expanded in the 1800’s, communication needs also expanded. Mail service was social media. People would write to tell relatives where they were and what they were doing. So, when Facebook’s subject line entices us with “Mamie Smith was in Hays …..” the line is far from new.
One of our most visible unnoticed most ubiquitous features of daily life was the result of the US Post Office solving a need and being sensitive to feelings. House numbers. Free city delivery by postal carriers to addresses. Much later, 1923, mailboxes on houses.
This is the first time for me to review a book for Book Byte. I am sitting at my kitchen table writing to you while my cat, Kitten, tries to take my pen away.
Hi, I'm Alan Erwin from Amarillo and I've been reading Winifred Gallagher's How the Post Office Created America.The American postal system is a marvel. Often maligned, it is a miracle of efficiency that every one of us takes for granted.
This is Mike Strong, in Hays, for HPPR. The book is “How the Post Office Created America” by Winifred Gallagher.As I was working on reviewing Winifred Gallagher’s book, I was also shooting photos and video for a dance concert. One of the pieces was nostalgic about physical, paper mail. Specifically, about getting paper rather than texts or email.
In the novel Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese, hunting is a major theme. Perhaps some readers are surprised by how young Franklin Starlight is when he learns to clean a rifle, age five, and by age seven, he is learning to shoot. He shoots targets and learns now to track. At the age of nine, he gets his first deer.
Hi, I am Phillip Periman from Amarillo, Texas and I am one of the discussants for the HPPR Reader’s book club. This spring we are reading “Neither Wolf nor Dog” by Kent Nerburn. This is a book I would never have bought except that it was chosen for this year’s read.
Hi, this is Sara Crow, owner of Crow & Co. Books in Hutchinson, Kansas, recommending one of my favorite books of the past year: When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill."I encourage you to consider a question: who benefits, my dear, when you force yourself to not feel angry?"
Raylene Hinz-Penner here, coming from central Kansas, North Newton east of Wichita, but I grew up east of Liberal in High Plains territory and am delighted to share in the Book Byte program. A retired college English professor, I am sharing a book that is not fiction, my normal pick, but a lyric genealogical history by notable historian, Tiya Miles, a most amazing book about an object, a sparkling masterpiece of African American women’s history published in 2021. Its title: All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake.”
Hello, my name is Andrea Elise and I live in Amarillo, Texas.When you think of the different fairy tales you’ve read to your children or students, and those other people have read to you, what are the first four words that often come to mind?
Hello Fellow Readers. This is Jennifer Kassebaum, Owner of Flint Hills Books in Council Grove, Kansas for the High Plains Public Radio Readers Book Club.One of my favorite books this summer is LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY, a debut novel by Bonnie Garmus. I admit that I enjoy a book with a sense of humor, and LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY is witty and smart.
Hello, I am Jennifer Kassebaum, Owner of Flint Hills Books in Council Grove, Kansas.For my first review for the High Plains Public Radio Readers Book Club, I have selected a University of Oklahoma Press publication titled FOR WANT OF WINGS: A Bird with Teeth and A Dinosaur in the Family (2022) by author Jill Hunting. This book is about Hunting’s great-grandfather, Thomas Russell, who discovered 83-million-year-old dinosaur bones in western Kansas during an expedition with the legendary paleontologist O C Marsh in 1872.
Hello! This is Michelle Reid in Dodge City for HPPR’s Radio Readers Book Club Book Bytes. I’m the school librarian at Dodge City High School, and I will mostly be talking about some of the best young adult books I’ve read. Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that young adult books are only for teens. YA authors are producing some of the best written, most thoughtful books that are being published right now.
Welcome to “Book Bytes;” I am Dr. Mary Scott, Professor of Biology at Dodge City Community College. I want to introduce you to We are Not from Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez. This gut wrenching, acclaimed novel is based on factual research of the dangerous routes followed by undocumented immigrants desperate to get to the United States.
Hi, I am Holly Mercer, Library Director at the Dodge City Community College. If you are like me, you may have several authors you look forward to reading whenever a new book is published. For me, Brené Brown is one such author. Two of my favorite titles from her are Raising Strong and Dare to Lead.
Gilead (2004), Home (2008), Lila (2014), and Jack (2021) by Marilynne Robinson Recommended by Jane Holwerda, Dodge City, KS
Camp Fossil Eyes: Digging for the Origins of Words (2009) by Mark Abley and Kathryn Adams (Illustrator) Recommended by Andrea Elise, Amarillo, TX
Why Poetry? (2017), by Matthew Zapruder Recommended by Dr. Phillip Periman, Amarillo, TX
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (2019) by Erika L. Sánchez Recommended by Mary Scott, Dodge City, KS
Watch Your Tongue: What Our Everyday Sayings and Idioms Figuratively Mean (2018) by Mark Abley Recommended by Andrea Elise, Amarillo, TX
Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank Recommended by Conny Bogaard, Holcomb & Garden City, KS
Pennies from Hamburger Heaven by Marcy McKay (2015) Backstory by author Marcy McKay, Amarillo TX
Mountains Beyond Mountains, a Biography of Dr. Paul Farmer (2004) by Tracy Kidder Recommended by Andrea Elise, Amarillo, TX
Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz (2022) and Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains by Lucas Bessire (2021) Recommended by Leslie VonHolten, Humanities Kansas, Lawrence, KS
Walking the Llano: A Texas Memoir of Place by Shelley Armitage (2017) Remarks by author Shelley Armitage, Los Cruces, NM and Vega, TX
The Island of Missing Trees: A Novel by Elif Shafak (2021) Recommended by Shelley Armitage, Los Cruces, NM and Vega, TX
1493- Uncovering the New World Columbus Created (2011)by Charles Mann Recommended by Dennis Garcia, originally from Garden City, KS, now Chula Vista, CA
On The Great Highway: The Wanderings and Adventures of a Special Correspondent (1901) by James Creelman Recommended by Mike Strong, KCK and Hays, KS
Modern Instances: the Craft of Photography. A Memoir by Stephen Shore (2022) Recommended by Dr. Phillip Periman, Amarillo, TX
PrairyErth: A Deep Map by William Least Heat Moon(1999) and My Flint Hills:Observations & Reminiscences from America's Last Tallgrass Prairie by Jim Hoy(2022) Recommended by Michael Grauer, native Kansan, long-time resident of the Texas Panhandle and the Llano Estacado, and currently Oklahoma City
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Family by Patrick Radden Keefe (2021) Recommended by Gaye Tibbets, Hutchinson, KS
Atlas of the Heart (2021) by Brené Brown Recommended by Holly Mercer, Dodge City Community College, Dodge City, KS
Children Whose Names We Do Not Know by Jenny Torres Sanchez (2021) Recommended by Mary Scott, Dodge City, KS
Amber & Clay by Laura Amy Schultz (2021) Recommended by Michelle Reid, Dodge City, KS
Japanese Fairy Tales compiled by Lafcadio Hearn (1948 & 1958) Recommended by Andrea Elise, Amarillo, TX
For Want of Wings: A Bird with Teeth and a Dinosaur in the Family by Jill Hunting (2022) and Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (2022) Recommended by Jennifer Kassebaum, Council Grove, KS
Japanese Fairy Tales compiled by Lafcadio Hearn (1948 & 1958) Recommended by Andrea Elise, Amarillo, TX
All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family’s Keepsake (2021) Recommended by Ralene Hinz-Penner, born & raised in SW Kansas, currently North Newton, KS
When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill (2022) Recommended by Sara Crow of Crow & Co Independent Book Seller, Hutchinson, KS
Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder by Kent Nerburn (2002) Recommended by Dr. Phillip Periman, Amarillo, TX
Medicine Walk: A Novel by Richard Wagamese (2016) and Good Seeds: A Menominee Foods Memoir by Thomas Pecore Weso (2016) Recommended & reviewed by Thomas Pecore Weso, formerly of Lawrence, KS, now the San Francisco Bay Area, CA
Native American Stories for Kids: 12 Traditional Stories from Indigenous Tribes Across North America by Thomas Pecore Weso (2022) Recommended by Kathleen Holt, Cimarron, KS
It's time for the new season of books, and we expect this one will really DRAW you in! Get ready for some illustrated works by some award-winning authors and artists.
Satrapi’s graphic memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution features powerful black-and-white comic strip images through which she tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to 14.
My background in wildlife biology and the history of science might make me an unlikely book leader for a graphic novel exploring growing up in Iran. I’m Kim Perez and currently, I serve on the faculty of the history department at Fort Hays State University.
Hello, Radio Readers! I’m Jane Holwerda from Dodge City KS. Welcome to 2022 and our kick-off for High Plains Public Radio Readers Spring Read: Graphic Novels—Worth a Thousand Words. For the next few months, we’ll be talking about the stories communicated in the graphic novels of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis; Nora Krug’s Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home; John Lewis and Andrew Aydin’s March; and Yuval Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
Hello, Radio Readers; this is Kim Perez, and I am coming to you from the history department at Fort Hays State University for HPPR Book Bytes. The books I will be discussing, the two-book series Persepolis and Persepolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi, are the first in our Spring 2022 reader’s theme: Graphic Novels: Worth a Thousand Words.
This is Leslie VonHolten calling in from the High Plains of Kansas with another HPPR Radio Readers Book Byte.Since its publication in 2003, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi has become one of the most highly regarded graphic novels and memoirs. Her stripped-bare but expressive illustrations drive the narrative just as much as her words.
Hello, Radio Readers; this is Kim Perez, and I am coming to you from the history department at Fort Hays State University. The books I will be discussing, the two-book series Persepolis and Persepolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi, are the first in our Spring 2022 reader’s theme: Graphic Novels: Worth a Thousand Words. If you love a compelling story and appreciate the power of the graphic novel to convey the nuances of a story, then these books are for you.
Thank you for joining us on the High Plains Public Radio Station. My name is Jessica Sadler and I am a Science Teacher and STEAM facilitator in Olathe, Kansas. I am here with the other book leaders to discuss Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and Persepolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi. These graphic novels are the author’s memoir of growing up a girl in revolutionary Iran. The photos in these two books, and the other book club picks, truly represent the theme Graphic Novels – Worth a Thousand Words.
This is Mike Strong, in Hays, for HPPR.There is little new under the sun. That includes graphic novels.In their present form graphic novels are book-length comic books. Most are drawn but some are combinations of photos and drawings.
I’m Hannes Zacharias from Lenexa for High Plains Public Radio, Radio Reader’s Book Club. The book is “Elevations: A Personal Exploration of the Arkansas River” by Max McCoy.As Patrick Dobson says, “Max McCoy’s Elevations is a sensitive, in-depth view of a river and its human and natural history…as fluid and adsorbing as the river itself.”
Hi I’m Valerie a radio reader from Topeka and I just finished Elevations: a Personal Exploration of the Arkansas River by Max McCoy. The volume was chosen as a 2019 Kansas Notable book and I can see why. I really enjoyed this book. Elevations fits into this fall’s Radio Readers theme of Rivers: Meandering Meanings as it is an intimate telling of the histories of the land and communities surrounding McCoy’s by-water-voyage of the Arkansas River...
This is Mike Strong, in Hays, for HPPR, Radio Reader’s Book Club. The book is “Elevations” by Max McCoy.Where do you go with meandering rivers, one of water - sometimes - and another of thought? Journalist Max McCoy follows the track of the Arkansas River...
I’m Hannes Zacharias from Lenexa for High Plains Public Radio, Radio Reader’s Book Club. The book is “Elevations: A Personal Exploration of the Arkansas River” by Max McCoy.As George Frazier says “McCoy floats through a valley haunted by gold-not only in mines along the Continental Divide, but also in corporate wheat farms that bleed the Ogallala aquifer”
This is Mike Strong, in Hays, for HPPR, Radio Reader’s Book Club The book is “Elevations” by Max McCoy.In Wichita, where the Arkansas River runs over a low-head dam under the 21st Street Bridge, the river claimed the life of 24 year old seminary student, Brian Bergkamp, who was kayaking in a 5-person group..
I'm John Harrington from my retirement location in southwest Washington state for High Plains Public Radio, Radio Readers Book Club.Elizabeth Kolbert begins her latest book, Under a White Sky, The Nature of the Future, with a chapter: “Down the River”
Despite the controversary surrounding this classic novel, the themes are most relevant to life today.First published in the United Kingdom in 1884 and then in the U.S. in 1885, Huck Finn is considered one of the great American novels. It is told in first person by Huckleberry “Huck” Finn, a friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels.
Returning for our Fall Season, Jane Holwerda -- author, administrator and educator --gets the pleasure of reviewing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.Dr. Holwerda holds a PhD in American Studies from Saint Louis University in Missouri, and her short fiction, essays, and poetry has appeared in publications such as: Cottonwood, Hurricane Review, MacGuffin, Red River Review, Sou’wester, South Loop Review, The Langdon Review, Guilty Pleasures, Out of Line, and Elegant Rage.
Here we are, Radio Readers, midstream in our fall book club series on rivers and making meaning. How could we not talk about one of the most iconic –and controversial—of American novels, set along and upon the mother of American rivers, the mighty Mississippi?
This is Leslie VonHolten broadcasting from the High Plains of Kansas with another HPPR Radio Readers Book Byte.When it comes to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, my heart races with anxiety. What a wonderful book. What a heavy, complicated, imperfect book. It was immediately controversial when it was published in 1884, and 137 years later, it is still one of the top stars of the Banned Books list.
Well, Radio Readers, how about this fabulously curious Fall 2024 book series “Through the Eyes of a Child”? What a fascinating stretch of reading over the past several months, right? Alice in Wonderland, Everything Sad is Untrue, The Blue Book of Nebo, and Long Way Down: our reading journey this fall has immersed us in various settings, genres, and cultures.
My name is Deana Craighead and I am the Curator of Art at Panhandle Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas. In the spring of 2024, the museum opened Dali’s Wonderland, an exhibition that features a limited-edition copy of Alice in Wonderland from the personal library of local philanthropist Sybil B. Harrington, illustrated by the artist Salvador Dali.
This is Nicole English for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club for the 2024 Fall Read.This is a discussion of the book, Long Way Down written in prose by Jason Reynolds, and for those who enjoy visuals with their prose, there is the graphic novel version, beautifully illustrated by Danica Novgorodoff.
This is Whitney Hodgin from the historic Cimarron Hotel for HPPR’S Radio Readers BookBytes.When I encounter people with strong personalities, I often consider what it would be like if the two of us were stuck in a broken-down elevator.
Hello everybody, this is Miriam Scott from Amarillo Texas with my last Radio Readers BookByte on Jason Reynold’s Long Way Down.We are still on the elevator with Will and the ghosts of Buck and Dani.
Hello, Radio Readers. I’m Jane Holwerda in Dodge City, Kansas, about the fourth and last book in our Fall 2024 series, “Through the Eyes of a Child.” Published in 2017, Long Way Down is the work of North American author Jason Reynolds, recipient of Newbury and Caldecott literary awards for his children’s and young adult books.
Hello again, this is Miriam Scott from Amarillo Texas.Last time I shared with you that in our book Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, the protagonist Will, a 15-year-old boy, is on his way to exact revenge on who he believes killed his brother Shawn.
Hello everybody, this is Miriam Scott from Amarillo Texas. I am a wife, a mother, and a priest. And I love to read. The genre of poetry has a special place in my heart. The absence of words, the unsaid words in between verses hold meaning in an almost soothing way.
Thank you for joining us on the High Plains Public Radio Station. My name is Jessica Sadler and I am a Science Teacher, STEAM facilitator, and coach in Olathe, Kansas. I am here with the other book leaders to discuss Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds.
Well, Radio Readers, how about this fabulously curious Fall 2024 book series “Through the Eyes of a Child”? What a fascinating stretch of reading over the past several months, right? Alice in Wonderland, Everything Sad is Untrue, The Blue Book of Nebo, and Long Way Down: our reading journey this fall has immersed us in various settings, genres, and cultures.
My name is Deana Craighead and I am the Curator of Art at Panhandle Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas. In the spring of 2024, the museum opened Dali’s Wonderland, an exhibition that features a limited-edition copy of Alice in Wonderland from the personal library of local philanthropist Sybil B. Harrington, illustrated by the artist Salvador Dali.
This is Nicole English for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club for the 2024 Fall Read.This is a discussion of the book, Long Way Down written in prose by Jason Reynolds, and for those who enjoy visuals with their prose, there is the graphic novel version, beautifully illustrated by Danica Novgorodoff.
This is Whitney Hodgin from the historic Cimarron Hotel for HPPR’S Radio Readers BookBytes.When I encounter people with strong personalities, I often consider what it would be like if the two of us were stuck in a broken-down elevator.
Hello everybody, this is Miriam Scott from Amarillo Texas with my last Radio Readers BookByte on Jason Reynold’s Long Way Down.We are still on the elevator with Will and the ghosts of Buck and Dani.
Hello, Radio Readers. I’m Jane Holwerda in Dodge City, Kansas, about the fourth and last book in our Fall 2024 series, “Through the Eyes of a Child.” Published in 2017, Long Way Down is the work of North American author Jason Reynolds, recipient of Newbury and Caldecott literary awards for his children’s and young adult books.
Hello again, this is Miriam Scott from Amarillo Texas.Last time I shared with you that in our book Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, the protagonist Will, a 15-year-old boy, is on his way to exact revenge on who he believes killed his brother Shawn.
Hello everybody, this is Miriam Scott from Amarillo Texas. I am a wife, a mother, and a priest. And I love to read. The genre of poetry has a special place in my heart. The absence of words, the unsaid words in between verses hold meaning in an almost soothing way.
Thank you for joining us on the High Plains Public Radio Station. My name is Jessica Sadler and I am a Science Teacher, STEAM facilitator, and coach in Olathe, Kansas. I am here with the other book leaders to discuss Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds.
More of Seven Books Plus – A Reading List to Save Democracy – Part IIIby Kansas Reflector columnist Max McCoy. This is a list of seven books to save democracy, one reader at a time.
Four of Seven Books – A Reading List to Save Democracy – Part II by Kansas Reflector columnist Max McCoy. This is a list of seven books to save democracy, one reader at a time.
One day last week, I went to a coffee shop downtown to meet a friend. I had a hardback book tucked under my arm to give to the friend, a historian who shares my interest in the twisting and sometimes tortured arc of American democracy.
Hi everyone. This is Andrea Elise coming to you from Amarillo, Texas, to talk about the memoir, Call Me Debbie.If you have never heard the name “Deborah Voight,” you are probably in the majority.
MIA – Hi, my name is Mia Mendez and I’m 13 years old and I’m from Cimarron, Kansas. I recently read the book Barefoot Dreams of Petra Luna by Alda P Dobbs and her second book continuing on to that story The Other Side of the River.
Hello, this is Michelle Reid for the HPPR Radio Readers Summer Book Club. Today I’m here with my granddaughter Claire to talk about one of her favorite books.
Hello, this is Michelle Reid for the HPPR Radio Readers Summer Book Club. Today I’m here with my granddaughter Emma to talk about one of her favorite books. Good morning!
This is James Kenyon for the High Plains Radio Readers Book Summers Reading List. I am an active reader and writer. I authored Golden Rule Days. It is a history of the former high schools in all 105 counties in Kansas.
I am Tracy Million Simmons, owner of Meadowlark Press. As a small regional press specializing in stories from the Midwest, I’d like to take this moment to introduce you to a Meadowlark book. One of my all-time favorites is Gravedigger’s Daughter: Vignettes from a Small Kansas Town, by Cheryl Unruh.
I’m Emilie Moll, editorial assistant for Meadowlark Press, for the High Plains Public Radio Summer Reading List. Our small, independent press specializes in stories from the Midwest, and today I'll be talking about a Meadowlark Book, I’ve Been Fighting This War Within Myself by Antonio Sanchez-Day.
It is with deep sadness that we share the passing of PJ Pronger of Amarillo. PJ was a Book Leader for the 2020 Spring Read – Radio Waves and a contributor of Radio Reader BokBytes. We appreciated his insight as well as his eloquence. The HPPR Radio Readers Book Club is an on-air, on-line community of readers exploring themes of interest to those who live and work on the High Plains. We will miss PJ in that community and thank his family for sharing him with us.
The HPPR Radio Readers Book Club is sad to learn of the passing of Mike Strong of Hays and Kansas City. For more than five years, Mike has been a steady source of Radio Readers BookBytes. We continue to air his thoughts as a tribute to our friend and as a thank you to Mike for sharing his insight, eloquence and broad talent. Radio Readers across the High Plains will long remember you, Mike. Rest well.
Hello, Radio Readers! I’m Jane Holwerda and – believe it or not –it’s time to wrap up this most incredible of Spring Reads, “Water, Water, Neverwhere.”
To end this set of readings with Plainwater by Anne Carson feels perfect. If not perfect, well, it still feels. Carson, once described by Bruce Hainley as “a philosopher of heartbreak” doesn’t just mix genres in her works but calls into question linguistic and cultural bedrocks that inform our reading of the continuity of human experiences.
I’m Pat Tyrer from Canyon, Texas for the High-Plains-Public-Radio-Readers Book Club.Today I’ll be sharing some poetry, all tangentially connected to our spring theme of “Water, Water, Neverwhere.” I’ve included poems from famous poets as well as those from poets on the High Plains.
Hello, Radio Readers! I’m Jane Holwerda from Dodge City, Kansas, thinking about Plainwater, a multilayered work from early in the career of Anne Carson, a writer pegged as a contender for a Nobel.
I’m Pat Tyrer from Canyon, Texas for the High-Plains-Public-Radio-Readers Book Club.Today I’ll be sharing some poetry, all tangentially connected to our spring theme of “Water, Water, Neverwhere.”
Hello, Radio Readers! Jane Holwerda from Dodge City, Kansas, here to reflect on Anne Carson’s Plainwater, an eclectic collection of essays and poetry – and just in time for April, National Poetry Month.
Hello HPPR listeners. I’m Andrea Elise in Amarillo, and I am excited to tell you about a poem called “A Song of Winter Weather.”Isn’t it fun to stumble upon an author who, though widely published, is new to you?
Through essay and poetry, Carson envisions a present-day interview with a seventh-century BC poet, and offers varied lecturettes. She imagines the muse of a fifteenth-century painter attending a phenomenology conference in Italy.
This is Mike Strong, in Hays, for HPPR. The book is “Bewilderment” by Richard Powers.The first text in Richard Powers’ “Bewilderment” is a quote from Rachel Carson. It took me back a few years. When Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” was published in September 1962 my parents purchased a copy for my 15th birthday two months later.
This is Leslie VonHolten with another Radio Readers Book Byte.Radio Readers listeners will know that I absolutely am not a science fiction reader. The minute someone time travels, or gets on a spaceship, or has a conversation with some other kind of sentient life force not from Earth—well, I am out. No thank you.
I’m Pat Tyrer from Canyon, Texas for the High-Plains-Public-Radio-Readers Book Club.The novel I’ll be talking about today is Richard Power’s 2021 novel Bewilderment.
Hello, this is Shelley Armitage for Radio Readers Book Club --We used to talk to animals, didn’t we? No, I don’t mean the family dog and cat. I mean bears, cougars, ravens, eagles. And they talked to us. But something happened when we began to see them as fair sport, trophies, fit for feed yards or timeable milking machines.
This is Mike Strong, in Hays, for HPPR. The book is “Bewilderment” by Richard Powers. When we come into our narrator's story, he is a widower with his autistic, talented, brilliant, highly active, nine-year old son. They are on a trip to find a dark sky to look at the stars through their telescope.
This is Leslie VonHolten from the High Plains of Kansas with another HPPR Radio Readers Book Byte.At night, Theo and his young son Robin, the main characters of Bewilderment by Richard Powers, travel through the outer reaches of known space with their imaginations.
Hello, Radio Readers. I’m Jane Holwerda from Dodge City, Kansas, ruminating on Richard Powers’ 2021 Bewildered, a work of fiction currently pushing my thinking on the scope of nature and the natural world.
Hello! I’m Cheryl Dunn in Lincoln, NE for HPPR’s Radio Readers Fall Book Club.The book Bewilderment by Richard Powers was one that I just couldn’t get through. I picked it up multiple times and would read several pages and then would have to put it down again.
I would like to talk today about Sylvia Plath’s poem, “Stars Over the Dordogne.”Even if one does not know of Sylvia’s devastating history of depression and eventual suicide, it does not take long to realize the depth of sadness in her beautiful poem.
“The world is too much with us; late and soon,Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—Little we see in Nature that is ours;We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!...”
Hello, Radio Readers! I’m Jane Holwerda for High Plains Public Radio. About our 2023 Summer Read. You know, every week in June and through most of July, Radio Readers have talked about books worthy of sharing, and now we have an incredible book list. Do you have time for one more recommendation?
Hello, my name is Andrea Elise and I live in Amarillo, Texas. I just finished reading the excellent short story “Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield, published in the author’s 1922 collection of stories called The Garden Party.
Hi, I am Holly Mercer, Library Director at Dodge City Community College. I selected the book Poverty, By America written by Matthew Desmond because I read his first book Evicted when it was published in 2016 and found it to be intriguing.
Hi! I’m Calliope from Wichita and I’ve been reading a lot this summer between Scout camp, jazz classes, and – well, regular reading!
My summer reading recommendation is not a book, but a magazine—which is also, in so many ways, a community. The New Territory calls itself “an autobiography of the Lower Midwest,”—the Lower Midwest being Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Northwest Arkansas, Southern Illinois, and Iowa. But in their words, quote, “When it feels right, we color outside those border lines.”
Hello, I’m Sara Crow, co-owner of Crow & Co. Books in Hutchinson. I’ll be talking about The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, by Michael Finkel, a true crime story about one of the world’s most successfully notorious art thieves in history, Stéphane Breitwieser.
Hello, HPPR Book Club members. My name is Andrea Elise and I live in Amarillo, TX.I just finished reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s extraordinary memoir, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith.
Hello, my name is Andrea Elise and I live in Amarillo, TX. I just finished reading Rosemary Brown’s compelling memoir, Unfinished Symphonies, published in 1971.
I’m Pat Tyrer from Canyon, Texas for the High-Plains-Public-Radio-Readers Book Club. Over the past few years, I’ve noticed that some of the most provocative and enjoyable writing is being published in the genre of young adult novels. Such is the case with Daniel Nayeri’s Everything Sad is Untrue (A True Story). In fact, I was so affected by this book that I have bought and given away several copies.
Let’s turn to the book that is the subject of this review: Ann Nepolitano’s Hello Beautiful. I read – or rather devoured – this book shortly after it was released in March of this year due to an ordering error.
In case you missed it, the culmination of the Spring Read went down on Sunday, May 7th with book leaders and community partners discussing the breadth of books from the latest series, "In Touch with the World." Click the audio link at the op of this page to hear it in full.
The HPPR Radio Readers Book Club’s 2023 Spring Read – In Touch with the World ends on Sunday, May 7, 2023, with a two-hour, live book discussion. Since January, 27 contributors have posted 51 Radio Readers BookBytes covering 23 books from 14 countries.
I am Xánath Caraza, and I today will read one bilingual poem from my book Sílabas de viento / Syllables of Wind
Hello, friends. I’m Jane Holwerda for High Plains Public Radio Radio Readers with a friendly FYI: the end is near for this most incredible Spring 2023 Read, “In Touch with the World…At Home on the High Plains.”
Thank you for joining us for the High Plains Public Radio Readers Book Club. I’m Jessica Sadler, a Science Teacher and STEAM facilitator in Olathe, Kansas. I am here with the other book leaders to discuss Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff.
Once Were Warriors is a brutal story of a Maori family living in poverty in New Zealand. The author, Alan Duff, is also Maori, and he spent part of his childhood in low-income housing.
Our final book, the fourteenth in our series is Once Were Warriors, Alan Duff's harrowing vision New Zealand's indigenous people some two hundred years after the English conquest.
Welcome, this is Mary Scott with a Radio Readers BookByte for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club. I recently finished “I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban” written by Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb.
Hi, I’m Marcy McKay from Amarillo, author of the award-winning novel, Pennies from Burger Heaven. I’m excited to be a Radio Reader for High Plains Public Radio’s Book Club. The book I chose for In Touch with The World was I Am Malala, by Malala Yousufzai. She’s the girl who stood up for education in Pakistan and was shot by the Taliban in 2012 when she was just 15 years old.
Hello, Radio Readers; this is Kim Perez, and I am coming to you from Hays with a few thoughts about the book I Am Malala for the spring 2023 Radio Readers Book Club.
In case you missed it, hear the full audio from the Fall 2022 On-Air Live Book Discussion on the link at the top of this page!
The 2022 Fall Read - Rural Life Revisited culminated in a lively discussion Sunday evening, November 13, 2022. Thanks to all who participated!
Hello, Radio Readers. Jane Holwerda here from Dodge City, Kansas. It’s almost the end of our Fall 2022 read, Rural Life Revisited. And of course, we’re gearing up for our on-air program in mid-November to revisit the ways our perceptions of rural life may have been challenged by our conversations about Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg OH, Annie Proulx’s That Old Ace in the Hole, and Winfred Gallagher’s How the Post Office Created America.
As the United States expanded in the 1800’s, communication needs also expanded. Mail service was social media. People would write to tell relatives where they were and what they were doing. So, when Facebook’s subject line entices us with “Mamie Smith was in Hays …..” the line is far from new.
One of our most visible unnoticed most ubiquitous features of daily life was the result of the US Post Office solving a need and being sensitive to feelings. House numbers. Free city delivery by postal carriers to addresses. Much later, 1923, mailboxes on houses.
This is the first time for me to review a book for Book Byte. I am sitting at my kitchen table writing to you while my cat, Kitten, tries to take my pen away.
Hi, I'm Alan Erwin from Amarillo and I've been reading Winifred Gallagher's How the Post Office Created America.The American postal system is a marvel. Often maligned, it is a miracle of efficiency that every one of us takes for granted.
This is Mike Strong, in Hays, for HPPR. The book is “How the Post Office Created America” by Winifred Gallagher.As I was working on reviewing Winifred Gallagher’s book, I was also shooting photos and video for a dance concert. One of the pieces was nostalgic about physical, paper mail. Specifically, about getting paper rather than texts or email.
This is Mike Strong, in Hays, for HPPR. e book is “How the Post Office Created America” by Winifred Gallagher.
In the novel Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese, hunting is a major theme. Perhaps some readers are surprised by how young Franklin Starlight is when he learns to clean a rifle, age five, and by age seven, he is learning to shoot. He shoots targets and learns now to track. At the age of nine, he gets his first deer.
Hi, I am Phillip Periman from Amarillo, Texas and I am one of the discussants for the HPPR Reader’s book club. This spring we are reading “Neither Wolf nor Dog” by Kent Nerburn. This is a book I would never have bought except that it was chosen for this year’s read.
Hi, this is Sara Crow, owner of Crow & Co. Books in Hutchinson, Kansas, recommending one of my favorite books of the past year: When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill."I encourage you to consider a question: who benefits, my dear, when you force yourself to not feel angry?"
Raylene Hinz-Penner here, coming from central Kansas, North Newton east of Wichita, but I grew up east of Liberal in High Plains territory and am delighted to share in the Book Byte program. A retired college English professor, I am sharing a book that is not fiction, my normal pick, but a lyric genealogical history by notable historian, Tiya Miles, a most amazing book about an object, a sparkling masterpiece of African American women’s history published in 2021. Its title: All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake.”
Hello, my name is Andrea Elise and I live in Amarillo, Texas.When you think of the different fairy tales you’ve read to your children or students, and those other people have read to you, what are the first four words that often come to mind?
Hello Fellow Readers. This is Jennifer Kassebaum, Owner of Flint Hills Books in Council Grove, Kansas for the High Plains Public Radio Readers Book Club.One of my favorite books this summer is LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY, a debut novel by Bonnie Garmus. I admit that I enjoy a book with a sense of humor, and LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY is witty and smart.
Hello, I am Jennifer Kassebaum, Owner of Flint Hills Books in Council Grove, Kansas.For my first review for the High Plains Public Radio Readers Book Club, I have selected a University of Oklahoma Press publication titled FOR WANT OF WINGS: A Bird with Teeth and A Dinosaur in the Family (2022) by author Jill Hunting. This book is about Hunting’s great-grandfather, Thomas Russell, who discovered 83-million-year-old dinosaur bones in western Kansas during an expedition with the legendary paleontologist O C Marsh in 1872.
Hello! This is Michelle Reid in Dodge City for HPPR’s Radio Readers Book Club Book Bytes. I’m the school librarian at Dodge City High School, and I will mostly be talking about some of the best young adult books I’ve read. Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that young adult books are only for teens. YA authors are producing some of the best written, most thoughtful books that are being published right now.
Welcome to “Book Bytes;” I am Dr. Mary Scott, Professor of Biology at Dodge City Community College. I want to introduce you to We are Not from Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez. This gut wrenching, acclaimed novel is based on factual research of the dangerous routes followed by undocumented immigrants desperate to get to the United States.
Hi, I am Holly Mercer, Library Director at the Dodge City Community College. If you are like me, you may have several authors you look forward to reading whenever a new book is published. For me, Brené Brown is one such author. Two of my favorite titles from her are Raising Strong and Dare to Lead.
It's time for the new season of books, and we expect this one will really DRAW you in! Get ready for some illustrated works by some award-winning authors and artists.
Satrapi’s graphic memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution features powerful black-and-white comic strip images through which she tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to 14.
My background in wildlife biology and the history of science might make me an unlikely book leader for a graphic novel exploring growing up in Iran. I’m Kim Perez and currently, I serve on the faculty of the history department at Fort Hays State University.
Hello, Radio Readers! I’m Jane Holwerda from Dodge City KS. Welcome to 2022 and our kick-off for High Plains Public Radio Readers Spring Read: Graphic Novels—Worth a Thousand Words. For the next few months, we’ll be talking about the stories communicated in the graphic novels of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis; Nora Krug’s Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home; John Lewis and Andrew Aydin’s March; and Yuval Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
Hello, Radio Readers; this is Kim Perez, and I am coming to you from the history department at Fort Hays State University for HPPR Book Bytes. The books I will be discussing, the two-book series Persepolis and Persepolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi, are the first in our Spring 2022 reader’s theme: Graphic Novels: Worth a Thousand Words.
My name is Andrea Elise and I live in Amarillo, Texas. I’m here to talk about Persepolis, a two-part autobiographical narrative by Marjane Satrapi.
This is Leslie VonHolten calling in from the High Plains of Kansas with another HPPR Radio Readers Book Byte.Since its publication in 2003, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi has become one of the most highly regarded graphic novels and memoirs. Her stripped-bare but expressive illustrations drive the narrative just as much as her words.
Hello, Radio Readers; this is Kim Perez, and I am coming to you from the history department at Fort Hays State University. The books I will be discussing, the two-book series Persepolis and Persepolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi, are the first in our Spring 2022 reader’s theme: Graphic Novels: Worth a Thousand Words. If you love a compelling story and appreciate the power of the graphic novel to convey the nuances of a story, then these books are for you.
Thank you for joining us on the High Plains Public Radio Station. My name is Jessica Sadler and I am a Science Teacher and STEAM facilitator in Olathe, Kansas. I am here with the other book leaders to discuss Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and Persepolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi. These graphic novels are the author’s memoir of growing up a girl in revolutionary Iran. The photos in these two books, and the other book club picks, truly represent the theme Graphic Novels – Worth a Thousand Words.
This is Mike Strong, in Hays, for HPPR.There is little new under the sun. That includes graphic novels.In their present form graphic novels are book-length comic books. Most are drawn but some are combinations of photos and drawings.
I’m Hannes Zacharias from Lenexa for High Plains Public Radio, Radio Reader’s Book Club. The book is “Elevations: A Personal Exploration of the Arkansas River” by Max McCoy.As Patrick Dobson says, “Max McCoy’s Elevations is a sensitive, in-depth view of a river and its human and natural history…as fluid and adsorbing as the river itself.”
Hi I’m Valerie a radio reader from Topeka and I just finished Elevations: a Personal Exploration of the Arkansas River by Max McCoy. The volume was chosen as a 2019 Kansas Notable book and I can see why. I really enjoyed this book. Elevations fits into this fall’s Radio Readers theme of Rivers: Meandering Meanings as it is an intimate telling of the histories of the land and communities surrounding McCoy’s by-water-voyage of the Arkansas River...
This is Mike Strong, in Hays, for HPPR, Radio Reader’s Book Club. The book is “Elevations” by Max McCoy.Where do you go with meandering rivers, one of water - sometimes - and another of thought? Journalist Max McCoy follows the track of the Arkansas River...
I’m Hannes Zacharias from Lenexa for High Plains Public Radio, Radio Reader’s Book Club. The book is “Elevations: A Personal Exploration of the Arkansas River” by Max McCoy.As George Frazier says “McCoy floats through a valley haunted by gold-not only in mines along the Continental Divide, but also in corporate wheat farms that bleed the Ogallala aquifer”
This is Mike Strong, in Hays, for HPPR, Radio Reader’s Book Club The book is “Elevations” by Max McCoy.In Wichita, where the Arkansas River runs over a low-head dam under the 21st Street Bridge, the river claimed the life of 24 year old seminary student, Brian Bergkamp, who was kayaking in a 5-person group..
I'm John Harrington from my retirement location in southwest Washington state for High Plains Public Radio, Radio Readers Book Club.Elizabeth Kolbert begins her latest book, Under a White Sky, The Nature of the Future, with a chapter: “Down the River”
Despite the controversary surrounding this classic novel, the themes are most relevant to life today.First published in the United Kingdom in 1884 and then in the U.S. in 1885, Huck Finn is considered one of the great American novels. It is told in first person by Huckleberry “Huck” Finn, a friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels.
Returning for our Fall Season, Jane Holwerda -- author, administrator and educator --gets the pleasure of reviewing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.Dr. Holwerda holds a PhD in American Studies from Saint Louis University in Missouri, and her short fiction, essays, and poetry has appeared in publications such as: Cottonwood, Hurricane Review, MacGuffin, Red River Review, Sou’wester, South Loop Review, The Langdon Review, Guilty Pleasures, Out of Line, and Elegant Rage.
Here we are, Radio Readers, midstream in our fall book club series on rivers and making meaning. How could we not talk about one of the most iconic –and controversial—of American novels, set along and upon the mother of American rivers, the mighty Mississippi?
This is Leslie VonHolten broadcasting from the High Plains of Kansas with another HPPR Radio Readers Book Byte.When it comes to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, my heart races with anxiety. What a wonderful book. What a heavy, complicated, imperfect book. It was immediately controversial when it was published in 1884, and 137 years later, it is still one of the top stars of the Banned Books list.
Well, Radio Readers, how about this fabulously curious Fall 2024 book series “Through the Eyes of a Child”? What a fascinating stretch of reading over the past several months, right? Alice in Wonderland, Everything Sad is Untrue, The Blue Book of Nebo, and Long Way Down: our reading journey this fall has immersed us in various settings, genres, and cultures.
My name is Deana Craighead and I am the Curator of Art at Panhandle Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas. In the spring of 2024, the museum opened Dali’s Wonderland, an exhibition that features a limited-edition copy of Alice in Wonderland from the personal library of local philanthropist Sybil B. Harrington, illustrated by the artist Salvador Dali.
This is Nicole English for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club for the 2024 Fall Read.This is a discussion of the book, Long Way Down written in prose by Jason Reynolds, and for those who enjoy visuals with their prose, there is the graphic novel version, beautifully illustrated by Danica Novgorodoff.
This is Whitney Hodgin from the historic Cimarron Hotel for HPPR’S Radio Readers BookBytes.When I encounter people with strong personalities, I often consider what it would be like if the two of us were stuck in a broken-down elevator.
Hello everybody, this is Miriam Scott from Amarillo Texas with my last Radio Readers BookByte on Jason Reynold’s Long Way Down.We are still on the elevator with Will and the ghosts of Buck and Dani.
Hello, Radio Readers. I’m Jane Holwerda in Dodge City, Kansas, about the fourth and last book in our Fall 2024 series, “Through the Eyes of a Child.” Published in 2017, Long Way Down is the work of North American author Jason Reynolds, recipient of Newbury and Caldecott literary awards for his children’s and young adult books.
Hello again, this is Miriam Scott from Amarillo Texas.Last time I shared with you that in our book Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, the protagonist Will, a 15-year-old boy, is on his way to exact revenge on who he believes killed his brother Shawn.
Hello everybody, this is Miriam Scott from Amarillo Texas. I am a wife, a mother, and a priest. And I love to read. The genre of poetry has a special place in my heart. The absence of words, the unsaid words in between verses hold meaning in an almost soothing way.
Thank you for joining us on the High Plains Public Radio Station. My name is Jessica Sadler and I am a Science Teacher, STEAM facilitator, and coach in Olathe, Kansas. I am here with the other book leaders to discuss Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds.
