PANGEA Alliance Dear Libros Lege Participant:
Another Libros Lege Contest is upon us. The signup for the Third Annual Libros Lege Read-Aloud Contest opens on today, Monday, March 1st and closes Wednesday, March 31st. The first day of readings will be on Saturday, April 10th. As usual, the entire contest will take place at Eisenhower Public Library, located at 4613 N. Oketo in Harwood Heights.
The reading list features a few new titles this year.
We hope you will find something to your liking among the expanded selection.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the program, we feel it is important to highlight the primary mission of our contest. Libros Lege encourages good reading habits on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The premise of the contest is fairly simple. Participants read a book on our list and then perform an excerpt of their choosing in front of a panel of judges and an audience. Although all of the selections were originally written in Polish by Poles (with the exception of Joseph Conrad’s work, a Polish writer who composed his works in English), American participants read English translations.
The five winners of Libros Lege embark on the trip of a lifetime: an 8-day, all-expenses-paid tour of Warsaw and the Mazovia Region. Imagine visiting the capital of Poland and surrounding area for absolutely nothing – except the effort you put into reading a fine piece of Polish literature and preparing an excerpt of it for public reading!
A parallel contest is held in Poland, where participants read American literature in English and win a trip to Chicago. Through this exchange of sorts, Libros Lege fosters cultural understanding and appreciation among the citizens of the United States and Poland. Reading the literature of another country gives us a glimpse of a perspective unlike our own, expands our knowledge of the foreign and increases our tolerance of the different.
Please read The Contest Packet for more information. If you have any questions, please contact Ron Stoch, Eisenhower Public Library Director, or Patricia Radkowski, Libros Lege Volunteer Committee President.
Ron Stoch, Director
Eisenhower Public Library District
stochr@eisenhowerpld.org
708.867.7828
(Susan M./RA)
