Glen Carbon Centennial Library: Glen Carbon Library Reading Challenge: April 2026 Reading Challenge

April's Reading Challenge

Hello fellow Readers!

Happy April! This month we are challenging you to read diverse voices!

When you've finished your book, log it on Beanstack.

Have questions? Check out the Adult Reading Challenge page on our website here.

Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

10th ANNIVERSARY EDITION - NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A modern classic about star-crossed lovers that explores questions of race and being Black in America--and the search for what it means to call a place home. - From the award-winning author of We Should All Be Feminists and Half of a Yellow Sun - WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR An expansive, epic love story.--O, The Oprah Magazine One of the New York Times's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years - A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be Black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. At once powerful and tender, Americanah is a remarkable novel that is dazzling...funny and defiant, and simultaneously so wise. --San Francisco Chronicle

I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
by Malala Yousafzai

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday October 9, 2012, she almost paid the ultimate price.

Trail of Broken Wings
by Sejal Badani

When her father falls into a coma, Indian American photographer Sonya reluctantly returns to the family she'd fled years before. Since she left home, Sonya has lived on the run, free of any ties, while her soft-spoken sister, Trisha, has created a perfect suburban life, and her ambitious sister, Marin, has built her own successful career. But as these women come together, their various methods of coping with a terrifying history can no longer hold their memories at bay.Buried secrets rise to the surface as their father--the victim of humiliating racism and perpetrator of horrible violence--remains unconscious. As his condition worsens, the daughters and their mother wrestle with private hopes for his survival or death, as well as their own demons and buried secrets.Told with forceful honesty, Trail of Broken Wings reveals the burden of shame and secrets, the toxicity of cruelty and aggression, and the exquisite, liberating power of speaking and owning truth.

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