Our Summer 2025 Book Selections!
We carefully select books for our program to ensure they reflect the richness of Minnesota and rural life while also serving as “windows” into other places and perspectives. Each year, Kathrina and Danielle—both passionate book lovers—engage with numerous authors at conferences and workshops. They understand the value of author participation in book discussions, so the availability of authors is also an important consideration in our process.
Our Summer 2025 lineup takes us on journeys to South Korea, Minnesota, and Canada. Join Kim in an underground book club, accompany Natalie on an epic 2,000-mile canoe adventure, and follow Ezra as he connects with his Ojibwe heritage while unraveling a crime.
Rural Minnesota high school students and Bemidji State University English Education majors and professors will be interacting online and attending monthly Zoom book club meetings where we can meet the authors!
June
Kim Hyun Sook begins college in South Korea in 1983 and is majoring in English literature. When the editor of the school newspaper invites her to his reading group, she expects to pop into the cafeteria to talk about Moby Dick or Hamlet. Instead she ends up hiding in a basement as the youngest member of an underground banned book club. And as Hyun Sook soon discovers, in a totalitarian regime, discovering great works of illicit literature are quickly overshadowed by fear and violence.
Banned Book Club is a fictionalized biographical graphic memoir and winner of the Freeman Award, which recognizes quality books for young adults that contribute to an understanding of East and Southeast Asia.
Author Ryan Estrada will join us on Zoom on Monday, June 9, at 7 pm CST.
July
Unrelenting winds, carnivorous polar bears, snake nests, sweltering heat, and constant hunger…paddling on a canoe from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay, following the 2,000-mile route, Natalie Warren and Ann Raiho faced unexpected trials and gained new insights about the communities they traveled through and themselves.
Hudson Bay Bound retraces the women’s journey from inspiration to Arctic waters, giving readers an insider view from the practicalities of planning a three-month canoe expedition to the successful accomplishment of the adventure of a lifetime. The book was selected by a partnership of Minnesota libraries and organizations for the 2023 One Book, One Community title.
Author Natalie Warren will join us on Zoom on Monday, July 14, at 7 pm CST.
August
Ezra Cloud hates living in Northeast Minneapolis. His father is a professor of their language, Ojibwe, at a local college, so they have to be there, but Ezra hates being away from the Nigigoonsiminikaaning First Nation. And he hates the bully in his neighborhood, Matt Schroeder, who terrorizes Ezra and his friend Nora George. Ezra gets into a terrible fight with Matt at school defending Nora, and that same night, Matt's house burns down. Instantly, Ezra becomes a prime suspect. Knowing he won't get a fair deal, and knowing his innocence, Ezra's family sends him away to run traplines with his grandfather in a remote part of Canada, while the investigation is ongoing. But the Schroeders are looking for him. . .
From acclaimed author Anton Treuer comes a novel that's both a thriller and coming-of-age story.
Chat with the Authors
We don’t just read the books—we get to meet the amazing authors who wrote them!
Byron Graves
Author of Rez Ball
June 2024
Claire Forrest
Author of Where You See Yourself
August 2024
Kim Hyun Sook and Ryan Estrada
Authors of Banned Book Club
June 2025
Natalie Warren
Author of Hudson Bay Bound
July 2025
Previous Year’s Selections
Summer 2024
June
Rez Ball, by Byron Graves, tells the story of Tre Brun, a young basketball player who is happiest when he is playing basketball on the Red Lake High School team while dealing with grief and memories of his big brother, Jaxon.
July
Ida in the Middle, by Nora Lester Murad, explores belonging and place through Ida, Palestinian-American girl, who eats a magic olive that takes her to the life she might have had in her parents’ village near Jerusalem.
August
Where You See Yourself, by Claire Forrest, focuses on Effie’s senior year in high school as she navigates her way through a year of admissions visits, senior class traditions, internal and external ableism. She learns the meaning of self advocacy.