HPPR Radio Readers Book Club

This is Glenda Shepard from Yucca Corners Farm in Stanton County KS. This is my Radio Readers BookByte for The American Dream by Shing Yin Khor. This is the second book in HPPR’s Spring Read of 2026 for the Radio Readers Book Club.

This book is a great road trip! If you want to go down Route 66 and not leave your house, then this is the book.The author who is an immigrant and has lived in the United States for a number of years and has been a citizen now for at least four years first learned about Route 66 after reading The Grapes of Wrath.

Hello listeners! This is Lauren Pronger from Amarillo, TX for the HPPR Radio Readers introducing our new book for the month: The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66 Discovering Dinosaur Statues, Muffler Men, and the Perfect Breakfast Burrito by award-winning graphic novelist Shing Yin Khor.

In this graphic memoir, artist and writer Shing Yin Khor sets out on a deeply personal journey along Route 66, interrogating what the “American Dream” means for those who have historically been excluded from it. Blending travelogue, history, and memoir, Khor explores roadside attractions, ghost towns, and personal memories while reckoning with identity, racism, and representation.

Greetings from the Oklahoma Panhandle! I’m Marjory Hall with a BookByte for HPPR’s Spring 2026 Read, a celebration of the centennial of Route 66. At first, the idea of commemorating the establishment of a road might seem odd. After all, there are roads nearly everywhere a person looks that have no significance beyond their obvious usefulness.

This was my first time reading Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and I can instantly see why it’s a classic: the themes of migration and class struggle are just as relevant today, and it reveals a cyclical history. The Joads come from Sallisaw, OK, what would have been Indian Territory just 30 years prior, where the Cherokee Nation (along with four others) were forcefully displaced from the Southeastern US to make way for rapid settler and agricultural expansion, including for cotton.

Hi, I’m Shaun Dunn from Lincoln, Nebraska here for HPPR’s Radio Readers Book Club. John Steinbeck is one of my favorite authors, so I was excited to re-read what is arguably his most celebrated book: The Grapes of Wrath.

The Joads and 2.5 million other Oklahomans and Midwesterners left the dust bowl for California. Grapes of Wrath chapter 19 “And then the dispossessed were drawn west—from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out.”

This is Glenda Shepard and my Radio Readers BookByte for Grapes of Wrath, part of the 2026 Spring Read for HPPR's Radio Readers Book Club. Imagine the Joad family trying to make its way from Eastern Oklahoma to California. I can think of one reason they could make the trip and at least 6 reasons for stopping them.

Hi, everyone. This is Mildred Rugger from Canyon, Texas, for the 2026 Spring Read of HPPR Radio Readers Book Club. In re-reading John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, I was reminded why I read several of his books during high school. His books immerse me in the world he is recreating, and that world is usually unlike my own.