Gateway Community College’s Library and Learning Commons is hosting a Big Read and a Little Read this month. As part of the Big Read, GCC students, faculty, staff, and those in the Greater New Haven community, are encouraged to read Charlayne Hunter-Gault’s book, To the Mountaintop, My Journey through the Civil Rights Movement, and then take part in a shared discussion, which will begin at 3:15 p.m on April 22.

Meanwhile, GCC’s Early Learning Center will host a Little Read for the center’s pre-school students and their families. The Little Read will be held at 4:30 p.m. on April 24 in the children’s section of the Library and Learning Commons. The Little Read is part of a city-wide reading day for young children. The children and their families will read Whistle for Willie by Ezra Jack Keats.  

The Big Read is the second event in a discussion series, “Nonviolent Conflict Resolution: From the Personal to Communal, Local to Global,” funded by a grant from the United States Institute of Peace to establish a new Peace Studies Special Collection

The Little Read is part of the Week of the Young Child, an annual celebration sponsored by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, to focus public attention on the needs of young children and their families and to recognize the early childhood programs and services that meet those needs. As part of the Little Read, each child will take home a copy of Whistle for Willie. The ELC staff will create a take-home activity centered around the book that families can do together.  

“It’s a wonderful way to celebrate reading,” ELC Director Marge Weiner said.

Multiple copies of Hunter-Gault's book, To the Mountaintop, are on reserve in GCC’s Library. A celebrated author and journalist, Hunter-Gault was one of two black students to desegregate the University of Georgia in 1961 and the first black woman writer at The New Yorker magazine.