You've got to read this. It's a classic. But you have to do it out loud. At the library.
The Concord Public Library and the Community Players of Concord will host a free “Countdown to Adventure Read-In” of the “Adventures of Tom Sawyer” starting Friday, Oct. 17, at 3 p.m., in conjunction with the Children's Theater Project rendition of the classic at the Audi that night. The reading will finish up at the library Saturday from 9 a.m.-1 p.m.
This is part of a kick-off to next year's commemoration of the centennial of Mark Twain's death, and celebration of the 175th anniversary of his birth in 2010.
Area schools have been invited to send their best readers to the Read-In and invite their best artists to contribute to a library display on Twain, one of the greatest figures in American literature. Out of Sawyer, of course, came Twain's masterpiece, “Huckleberry Finn,” certainly a candidate for the nation's seminal novel. In honor of the occasion, several bookstores, including Gibson's Bookstore in Concord and Main Street Book Stores in Warner, are donating Twain related books for the 100th and 175th ticket sold.
If you want to sign up to read at the library children's room, contact Jenny Patterson, the official Read-In coordinator, mom of two of the kids in the play and a very nice person. You can call her at 225-4610 or e-mail jennypatterson2003@yahoo.com.
If you want to buy a ticket for the play Friday night at 7 p.m. or Saturday at 2 p.m., go to communityplayersofconcord.org. Tickets are $8. The Friday performance includes a preshow with UNH professor Courtney Marshall, who will present, “Tom and Huck, Boyhood and Freedom.”
