History of the Action "One Country - One Book"

Idea of the Kazakhstan project “One Country - One Book” is based on the widely known in the USA library projects “One Book, One Chicago” and “If the Whole Seattle Reads One Book”, when the whole city reads the same book at the same time.

Idea of city reading holiday devoted to one book was offered by the public library Book Centre of Seattle – big city in the US north-west, Washington State. Aim of the action conducted first in 1998 under the slogan “If the Whole Seattle Reads One Book”, was reading promotion and strengthening of civil unity of Seattle dwellers. Later, such activities were held in other cities – Chicago, Buffalo, and Rochester.

The programme “One Book, One Chicago” was initiated by the Chicago public library with assistance of Chicago municipality. The programme aim was to stimulate interest of adult Chicago inhabitants and youth in simultaneous reading and discussion of the same book – in families and at work, with friends and acquaintances, in libraries, schools, universities, book shops, religious organizations, cafes, and other public places. On that day the city turns into a peculiar club of bibliophiles.

In October 2001, in Chicago there was the first city festival “Week of Book in Chicago: the City of Reading-lovers” where book presentations took place with discussions and authors speeches, seminars, excursions, and other activities. During 7 weeks tens thousand Chicagoans were reading and discussing the novel by the American writer Harper Lee (born in 1926) “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1960) awarded to Pulitzer Prize. The book puts important problems of racism and tolerance, actual for modern Chicago and the whole world.

At present, the idea of the project “One Country - One Book” has spread broadly in many countries of the world (Spain, countries of Latin America, Korea and other). In particular, marathon reading in Spain was devoted to 80-th anniversary of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. Volunteers continuously were reading aloud the novel during several days. Maria-Teresa Fernandes de la Vega, Deputy Chair of Spain government, started this marathon. Each participant was given 15 minutes during which he had to expose to sound 7 pages of the novel published 40 years ago.

In Korea, in 2003, children's books were chosen for joint reading. This project developed later into the project “One Library – One Book” and “One Village – One Book”.

Inhabitants of south-west part of England go through a “big reader's adventure” every year. All the population of this region reads the same book between January and March every year. In 2006, they read the book by Jules Verne “Around the World in Eighty Days”.