Our 2024 Read City challenge has come to a close, and once again, Knox County proved its chops as a book-loving, big-reading community. Together, readers of all ages completed 162,000 literary missions! They read, wrote, listened, crafted and explored, earning over 30,000 prizes!

We kicked off the 2024 challenge at the Bijou Theatre last January with help from the Knoxville Children’s Theatre. The theme was “Adventure Begins at the Library” and adventures we had!

Leading the way from the depths of the oceans to the surface of the moon were real life explorers Davy Crockett (frontiersman and statesman), Jacques Cousteau (oceanographer), Matthew Henson (explorer and first person to step foot on the North Pole), Amelia Earhart (pilot), Neil Armstrong (astronaut) and Sophia Danenberg (mountaineer).

We read about their lives, dreams, successes and failures.

Our One Book Read City program with Knox County Schools was hugely popular. Every elementary student read the graphic novel, Shelby and Watts: Tidepool Troubles. The author, Ashlyn Anstee, even came to town. She visited five elementary schools and was featured at the Children’s Festival of Reading! Students were so excited to meet her that they formed a line crisscrossing the Festival lawn. Anstee signed more than 300 books that day. That led to a big summer and fall of reading.

Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs launched Read City with our inaugural challenge in 2019 to “Read to the Moon.” The goal for the first challenge was to log 250,000 hours of reading. Over the next few years, the goal was to hit one million hours of logged reading time. Each year, we met the goal handily. But this year, we shift to literary activities, basing the challenges on a game-like model. We busted through our goal of 100,000 activities by over 60%!

Curious about what’s next? Read City and Knox County Public Library invite you to step in to the library laboratory to launch the 2025 Read City USA challenge, Curious Minds.

Mary Pom Claiborne is assistant director for marketing, communications and development for Knox County Public Library.