Paterson is a National Book Award and Caldecott Award winner, spanning both YA and adult literature, as well as a resident of Barre, Vermont. This book was chosen for the Vermont Reads project in 2018 by the Vermont Humanities Council. This is a program that distributes free copies of the book to communities who successfully apply and then encourages and supports community discussions and events for promoting discussions about the themes. This book tells the story of an Italian immigrant family’s young daughter and a native-born boy from a home of violence as they contend with the mill strike in Lawrence, MA in 1912. Issues that are pertinent and important for our day, such as immigration, wealth inequality, poverty, domestic violence, are all presented in a well-told and gripping novel. Eager to pursue this project in our own town of Brownsville.