Today the UUA announced that this year’s Common Read is Just Mercy, A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson (Spiegel & Grau, 2014).
With Just Mercy’s emphasis on people trapped by the criminal justice system — specifically poor people, people of color and children — a possible pairing that came to my mind for this year’s Common Read was Knock Knock: My Dad’s Dream for Me by Daniel Beaty (Little, Brown and Company, Hatchette Book Group).
This picture book depicts a boy whose absent father advises him through letters about how to be a man. Incarceration is not identified in the story as the reason for the father’s absence, but is addressed in an afterword. The illustrator, Bryan Collier, received the American Library Association’s 2014 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award.
I'd love to see multi-generational experience around the Unitarian Universalist Association's Common Read, a pairing each year of the adult non-fiction book with books for children and youth.
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