Charlotte Mecklenburg Library announces the return of Community Read in March 2025 with a focus on creating community dialogue around, “Art Is…” The Community Read is the Library’s month-long effort to have the community read (or listen) to books of interesting and relevant topics and participate in discussions, book clubs and events hosted by the Library and community partners. The signature title, Portrait of A Thief by Grace D. Li, includes a Community Read After Hours Affair at the Mint Museum on Randolph Road on March 12, 2025.
Adults are encouraged to read and discuss the main title, and the Library selected companion titles for children and teens including:
- From Twinkle with Love by Sandhya Menon
- Art Club Dare to Create! By Rashad Doucet
- The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds
Everyone in the community can participate: read a book, share perspectives, attend a program, engage on social media and build a stronger community together. #communityread2025
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FROM:
Our Community Partners
Belle Johnston Community Center • Blumenthal Performing Arts Center • CBI • Center City Partners • Charlotte Bilingual Preschool • Charlotte History Museum • Charlotte Lit • Child Care Resources, Inc. • City of Charlotte Community Engagement • City of Charlotte • Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department • Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools • Communities in Schools • Community Link • Cornelius Police Department • Central Piedmont Community College • Davidson Police Department • Discovery Place • GenerationNation • Hope Street Food Pantry • The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture • Humane Society of Charlotte • Huntersville Police Department • International House • Johnson C. Smith University • Johnson & Wales University • Levine Museum of the New South • MCBCC • Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office • Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation • Mint Hill Police Department • Mint Museum • Our Bridge • Our Daily Bread Foundation • Pass the Peace Feast • PBS • Pineville Police Department • Promise Youth Development • Queens University of Charlotte • ReadDavidson • Read Your Heart Out • The Relatives • Refugee Support Services • Teen Health Connection • Time Out Youth • Trinity Episcopal School • University of North Carolina at Charlotte • University City Partners • VisART Video • YMCA of Greater Charlotte • YWCA Central Carolinas
Community Read FAQs
Have questions about Community Read? View our FAQs page.
Be Counted!
We hope to engage 100,000 people - 10% of Mecklenburg County! - in Community Read 2025. If your book club, classroom or organization has discussed one of the books or participated as a group in a program, please let us know so we can count you!
If you are interested in becoming a community partner to host events, discussions or events during Community Read 2025, please reach out to Meryle Leonard at [email protected]
Take our Beanstack Challenge
Log your reading and activity time using the Beanstack tracker and track your progress. Log in to your existing Beanstack account from Summer Break or create a new one and take the Community Read challenge.
Participate in a Program
Register for one of our Library and community partner led programs all month long.
Library-led programs and events
Partner-led programs and events (coming soon)
Get the Books
Portrait of a Thief
by Grace D. Li
Ocean's Eleven meets The Farewell in this lush, lyrical heist novel inspired by the true story of Chinese art vanishing from Western museums, about diaspora, the colonization of art, and the complexity of the Chinese American identity. History is told by the conquerors. Across the Western world, museums display the spoils of war, of conquest, of colonialism: priceless pieces of art looted from other countries, kept even now. Will Chen plans to steal them back. A senior at Harvard, Will fits comfortably in his carefully curated roles: a perfect student, an art history major and sometimes artist, the eldest son who has always been his parents' American Dream.
But when a mysterious Chinese benefactor reaches out with an impossible--and illegal--job offer, Will finds himself something else as well: the leader of a heist to steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures, looted from Beijing centuries ago. His crew is every heist archetype one can imagine--or at least, the closest he can get. A con artist: Irene Chen, a public policy major at Duke who can talk her way out of anything. A thief: Daniel Liang, a pre-med student with steady hands just as capable of lockpicking as suturing. A getaway driver: Lily Wu, an engineering major who races cars in her free time. A hacker: Alex Huang, an MIT dropout turned Silicon Valley software engineer.
Each member of his crew has their own complicated relationship with China and the identity they've cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down. Because if they succeed? They earn fifty million dollars--and a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything they've dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted attempt to take back what colonialism has stolen.
GET THE BOOK
From Twinkle, With Love
by Sandhya Menon
Told through letters, aspiring filmmaker and wallflower Twinkle Mehra learns a lesson about love while directing a movie for the Midsummer Night arts festival, in which her longtime crush and his twin brother are also participating.
Twinkle Mehra has stories she wants to tell and universes she wants to explore, if only the world would listen. When fellow film geek Sahil Roy approaches her to direct a movie for the upcoming Summer Festival, it's a dream come true. And it gets her closer to her longtime crush, Neil Roy, Sahil's twin brother. Slight inconvenience: in the course of movie-making, Twinkle falls in love with adorkable Sahil.
GET THE BOOK
Art Club
by Rashad Doucet
Dale Donavan has heard the same lecture over and over again: Art will get you nowhere in life. A kid with a creative streak, Dale wants nothing more than to doodle, play video games, and create comics forever—maybe even as a full-time job one day. But between his grandfather pushing him to focus on his studies and a school with zero interest in funding arts programs, Dale feels like his future has already been decided for him.
That is, until he comes up with the perfect plan: What if he starts an after-school art club, gathers a team of creative students like himself, and proves all the naysayers—his stubborn vice principal in particular—wrong?
This might just work, but if the club isn’t financially successful by the end of the semester, the school with shut them down. This may be Dale’s only chance to show the adults in his life that a career as an artist is not just a dream but a possibility!
GET THE BOOK
The Dot
by Peter Reynolds
Vashti believes that she cannot draw, but her art teacher's encouragement leads her to change her mind.
"Her teacher smiled. "Just make a mark and see where it takes you." Art class is over, but Vashti is sitting glued to her chair in front of a blank piece of paper. The words of her teacher are a gentle invitation to express herself. But Vashti can't draw -- she's no artist. To prove her point, Vashti jabs at a blank sheet of paper to make an unremarkable and angry mark. "There!" she says. That one little dot marks the beginning of Vashti's journey of surprise and self-discovery.
That special moment is the core of Peter H. Reynolds's delicate fable about the creative spirit in all of us. With a simple, witty story and free-spirited illustrations, Peter H. Reynolds entices even the stubbornly uncreative among us to make a mark -- and follow where it takes us.