NEA Official to Eat Book if Ohio Island Doesn't Read It

Though the National Endowment for the Arts is encouraging communities to get together and devour the same book, literature director David Kipen has gone a bit further with tiny Kelleys Island, Ohio, the Sandusky Register reports. If the island’s 128 inhabitants don’t all read To Kill a Mockingbird, he’ll devour the book—literally. If they succeed, he’ll spring for a more traditional pizza party.

“For most of the life of The Big Read,” Kipen blogs of the NEA effort,  “I’ve been wishing aloud for a town small enough and brave enough to accept the challenge of dragooning every last literate resident, without exception, into tackling its chosen book.” Kipen is more than halfway to his goal, having signed up 70 of the island’s residents.
(More NEA stories.)