Rochester Reads - The Worst Hard Time

Rochester Reads seeks to encourage community discussion, family reading, literacy, understanding and cross community interaction by promoting the reading of one book and hosting discussions and events about the book.
This year Rochester Reads focuses on three books written about the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s.
The main selection is The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, which tells the story of a time when "Dust clouds boiled up, ten thousand feet or more in the sky, and rolled like moving mountains".
Allison Lassieur's The Dust Bowl: An Interactive History Adventure has been selected as the junior title. This "You Choose" book explores many different story paths through the Dust Bowl years.
Leah's Pony by Elizabeth Friedrich and Michael Garland, the picture book selection, tells the story of a farm family in the Great Plains trying to survive in a time of bank foreclosures and economic hardship.

The Friends of the Rochester Public Library are one of the proud 2011 Sponsors of this programme.