Through reading programs and community events, This City Reads! connects children and adults who share common experiences with books. Whether all ages read the same book within a specified timeframe, or parents bring their children to special events like This City Reads! Night at Canal Park, This City Reads! initiatives and activities encourage engaging experiences with books.

For This City Reads! we have decided to indicate annual themes, which we select based on what is happening in our community. We hope our community can gain a better understanding of issues related to the theme through reading and writing, as well as be better informed to be part of the solution.

Considering the difficult issues facing our students, community and country in the current and upcoming months, such as bullying, cyber bullying, political attack campaigns and a sense of rising impatience with one another, our team decided that our This City Reads! theme should be Civility. Encouraging civility through reading will be our goal through June 2017.