One Book
One Book Chelmsford is a community-wide reading program encouraging all residents to read a selected title and attend programming related to the book. The title is selected each Fall and the Library provides free copies to share. Related programs typically start early in the calendar year and often include a visit from the author. The library has been offering this program since 2007.
One Book 2021
Our One Book title for this year will be How to Be a Good Creature, by Sy Montgomery. It’s a wonderful memoir about gratitude, forgiveness, empathy, and grief told through the author’s encounters with 13 different animals, and the book includes lovely illustrations by Rebecca Green. We will also be collecting some copies of the version for younger readers, a full-color adaptation of the original called Becoming a Good Creature.
Sy Montgomery will be joining us via Zoom on Wednesday, April 21 at 7:00 p.m. – sign up now! Books are now available!
Wednesday, April 21st @ 7 PM
How To Be a Good Creature
by Sy Montgomery
Sy Montgomery’s 28 books for both adults and children have garnered many honors. The Soul of an Octopus was a 2015 Finalist for the National Book Awards. The Good Good Pig, her memoir of life with her pig, Christopher Hogwood, is an international bestseller. She is the winner of the 2009 New England Independent Booksellers Association Nonfiction Award, the 2010 Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award, the Henry Bergh Award for Nonfiction (given by the ASPCA for Humane Education) and dozens of other honors.
This year, the One Book programs are funded by:
Past One Book Selections
- 2020: Kitchen Yarns, by Ann Hood and Relish by Lucy Knisley
- 2019: Counting Descent, by Clint Smith, and The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas
- 2018: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah – watch the video from the event
- 2017: Stronger, by Jeff Bauman
- 2016 “Keeping Chelmsford in Suspense!”: The Columbus affair by Steve Berry, The Other Woman by Hank Phillippi Ryan, and There was an Old Woman by Hallie Ephron
- 2015: The Sandcastle Girls, by Chris Bohjalian
- 2014: The Art Forger, by B. A. Shapiro
- 2013: Townie, by Andre Dubus III
- 2012: March, by Geraldine Brooks, and Confederates in the Attic, by Tony Horwitz
- 2011: Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
- 2010: Shutter Island, by Dennis Lehane
- 2009: Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson
- 2008: To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
- 2007: Empire Falls, by Richard Russo