The point of the “One Book, One Community” movement is to foster the love of reading.

For organizers of Denton Reads, getting the likes of Orson Scott Card to make a trip to Denton to talk about one of his books doesn’t hurt the cause.

Denton Reads announced in June that it had selected Ender’s Game by Card as this year’s choice. Readers at the University of North Texas and Texas Woman’s University, in Denton public schools and in the community had three months to read the book. Earlier this month, discussion groups convened at the universities, school libraries, a local bookstore, Denton libraries and a church to talk about the book and watch movies that share the novel’s themes.

Kimberly Wells, a senior librarian at Denton’s South Branch Library, said the libraries put together a committee to direct this year’s project and the committee found that Ender’s Game could attract a broad audience. Last year, Denton Reads selected The Legacy of Luna, a memoir by Julia Butterfly Hill, who lived in a California Redwood tree for two years to protest logging.

“Nancy Pearl, a Seattle librarian whose ‘One Book, One City’ drive has been a real success, did a radio review of Ender’s Game and how it appeals to all the different ages,” Wells said. “It was also a word-of-mouth book. Then we got to talking about science fiction. It’s really gotten a lot more popular. We thought it was a good selection.”

Wells said Luna and Butterfly Hill had a built-in following, but the libraries got feedback that said nonfiction books have limited appeal.

“People participated and were really enthusiastic about the book, but we talked about it and thought it might be a good idea to choose a work of fiction this year. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t choose nonfiction again,” Wells said.

Donna Kearley, coordinator of library services for the Denton school district, said Ender’s Game is a book a lot of librarians recommend to new science-fiction readers.

“I do know that it is very widely read in high schools, and when high schoolers came to me and asked me for a fantasy recommendation and said, ‘This is the first one I’ve read,’ I’d recommend this book,” Kearley said. “It’s easy to read, it’s not really difficult to understand. A lot of high schoolers really enjoy it. Ender’s Game would be really be one of those that if a student was reading something else and said, ‘I’m really having trouble with this,’ I’d send them back to read it.”

The librarians said a shared reading of one book not only gets people reading, it also teaches readers that books don’t have a single meaning for every reader.

“I think it is a community awareness of the viewpoints, the wide viewpoints of a lot of people, that makes a difference,” Kearley said. “And we can have different political viewpoints — you and I can read the same book and get two very different things out of it. A professor of literature, a professor of science, a homemaker or a high schooler might have very different viewpoints of a book like Ender’s Game, and we can learn from each other.”

LUCINDA BREEDING can be reached at 940-566-6877. Her e-mail address is
cbreeding@dentonrc.com .