Don’t stop now: Wayne County Reads might be over, but message will remain

After months of hard work by the members of the Wayne County Reads Committee — and what can only be described as incredible participation by members of the community — the month-long celebration of reading has come to an end.

The event finished with a flourish this past weekend with the production of the play “I Never Saw Another Butterfly,” yet another fitting accompaniment to the committee’s 2006 reading selection, Elie Wiesel’s “Night,” the story of the author’s time in a Nazi death camp.

The idea was to get the community to read something together — and maybe to think a little bit in the process about some important moral questions.

What ended up happening is that many members of the community also took the time to think a little about tolerance, duty and responsibility as well as to ponder the lessons learned from one of the most terrible periods in world history — the Holocaust.

This wasn’t an easy book to read — or a particularly pleasant time period to remember. So, to have had so much participation is nothing short of encouraging and amazing.

The members of the Wayne County Reads Committee made all that look easy. Months of planning went into making a schedule of events that addressed not only the important issues that Wiesel discussed, but also encouraged the county to take the time to pick up the book.

And, after all, that was the main goal of the whole month anyway.

So, even though the celebration is over, perhaps the experience with “Night” will encourage many more local readers to push themselves to learn, to explore and to think about issues they might not have otherwise considered.

And, ultimately, the committee members hope this month’s events will send more of us back to the library.

That in itself would make all their hard work worthwhile.

Published in Editorials on April 4, 2006 11:12 AM