In
April, the California Center for the Book received
the 2007 Boorstin Award for innovative reading
promotion projects. California was singled-out for
its “Book Clubs in a Box” and “Mysterious
California” reading promotion programs, and
for its concise new public slogan: We help
librarians and teachers get California reading.
The four other states that won the national award
were Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, and
Maine.
National
Center for the Book Director John Y. Cole
presented California Director Mary Menzel with the
award in a Washington D.C. ceremony that included
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, Mamie
Bittner, Deputy Director, Institute for Museum and
Library Services, and Leslie Burger, President,
the American Library Association.
California
Director Mary Menzel says of the California Center’s
winning strategy, “This year we’ve been
concentrating on a few things and marketing them
better. Though Book Clubs in a Box are the
brainchild of [previous director] Natalie Cole, we’ve
fine-tuned the Center’s slogan, our mission
statement really, to best show librarians what we
can do for them: provide easy-to-use and low cost
reading promotion tools.”
Menzel
says “Mysterious California,” a “box”
program the Center will launch at the California
Library Association (CLA) Conference
in Long Beach in late October, is built on four
California mysteries by California authors: The
Art of Detection by Laurie R. King, Southland
by Nina Revoyr, Shell Games by Kirk
Russell, and Sharp Shooter by Nadia Gordon.
The books, according to Menzel, “show how the
emotional resonance of California places finds its
way into literature - mysteries particularly. We’re
really excited that our ‘Mysterious California’
authors will be on a panel in Long Beach.”
