2026 Spring Read

Hello, I'm Glenda Shepard from Yucca Corners Farm in Stanton County KS. HPPR's 2026 Spring Radio Readers Book Club theme is Route 66: 100 Years on the Mother Road. In1926 Route 66 opened in Chicago and traveled to Santa Monica CA.

Hello, everyone! From Pasadena, California, this is Jill Hunting with an HPPR BookByte. From the age of 10 until I left for college, I lived in Oklahoma City. Ours was a New England family relocated to the Midwest because of my father’s work, first as a schoolteacher in Lake Forest, Illinois, and then as a writer of flight manuals and exams for the Federal Aviation Agency. We were, you might say, in Oklahoma but not of Oklahoma.

Hi: I’m Sally Shattuck from Ashland, Kansas and I’ve been reading “Never Met a Man I Didn’t Like - The Life and Writings of Will Rogers:” by Joseph H. Carter. Route 66 is “The Will Rogers Highway”. It begins near his home in Santa Monica, California and ends in Chicago.

Humorist, actor, and social commentator Will Rogers was one of the most recognizable voices of early 20th-century America. A native of Oklahoma and a keen observer of American life, Rogers often traveled Route 66 as it emerged as a national artery.

Hi! I’m Marjory Hall from Goodwell, Oklahoma, back with another Radio Readers BookByte for the Radio Reader’s Spring 2026 season. I teach my students that the title of a book can be very important in understanding that work.

Khors celebrates quirky attractions while also unflinchingly recording unflattering places and people she encounters. Her illustrations include dilapidated buildings, abandoned hotels and filing stations. She celebrates concrete dinosaurs and muffler men, but the title of the book is The American Dream – a Question?

Hello listeners, this is Lauren Pronger from Amarillo, TX for my final Radio Readers BookByte on Shing Yin Khor’s graphic novel The American Dream? for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club. Today I’ll be continuing my look at the American Dream, the phrase and ethos itself as it’s depicted in the book of the same name, and what the book might tell us about the broader concept.

Route 66 has legendary status in my family. I’m Kathleen Holt, born, raised and still living in Cimarron, Kansas, but my father’s family made their way from his birthplace in Oklahoma building parts of Route 66 during and after the Dust Bowl, sprinkling aunts, uncles and cousins from the Midwest to California where they made their fortunes building roads.

This is Tracy Floreani, coming to you from central Oklahoma, just blocks away from historic Route 66, with commentary on the next book in the High Plains Public Radio Readers Club: Shing Yin Khor’s graphic memoir The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66.

Hello from Amarillo, TX! This is Lauren Pronger back again with another Radio Readers BookByte about Shing Yin Khor’s graphic novel The American Dream? for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club. So, we know from my previous BookBytes and the novel’s blurb that Khor undertook a Route 66 road trip to better understand the mythos of America and how they, as a queer immigrant, might fit into it.