Whether it’s the vibrant worlds of Dr. Seuss or the watercolor gardens of Beatrix Potter, books can transport young readers to places they’ve never been — including their local libraries.
In late March, the Kids Reading Across Rhode Island Program — an annual statewide effort to encourage fourth to sixth graders to read and engage with their community — announced their 2026 selections: “A Cup of Quiet” by author Nikki Grimes and illustrator Cathy Ann Johnson and “Conjure Island” by writer Eden Royce.
On June 13, the program will host a kickoff event where students can pick up a signed copy of either of the selected books and where Grimes will be in attendance. The program will last through this summer.
According to Danielle Margarida, youth services coordinator at the Office of Library and Information Services, the kickoff events are “really exciting for a lot of kids, because this is the first time they get to meet an author in person.”
Both books were selected by a committee of Rhode Island librarians and teachers according to a specific set of criteria, including an appropriate reading level, availability in different formats and representation of different voices, according to Margarida.
One of the goals of the program is to expose students to Rhode Island public libraries and their programs, Kate Lentz, executive director of the Rhode Island Center for the Book, said in an interview with The Herald.
This year marks the 17th KRARI since the program was founded in 2010. The program was inspired by the larger adult-focused Reading Across Rhode Island initiative.
“I said ‘you know, I love this Reading Across Rhode Island for adults, I wonder if we could do something similar for kids,’” Cheryl Space, library director of the Community Libraries of Providence, said in an interview with The Herald. “I thought it would be fun to relate it to the summer reading program.”
The summer reading program, which has a different theme each year, is part of OLIS’s initiative to promote reading among children and teens.
Though KRARI selections have typically been chosen with the summer reading theme in mind, selections are now connected to themes related to RARI’s selection — which is “Happy Land” by Dolen Perkins-Valdez for 2026 — in order to develop the program to be more “intergenerational.”
Grimes and Johnson’s book, “A Cup of Quiet,” focuses on a grandmother and granddaughter who spend time in nature together while collecting different sounds in a cup.
“Helping our children develop the practice of spending time in nature is to give them a vital, living source of knowledge — a treasure that can last their lifetime,” Grimes said in an interview with the Brown Bookshelf.
The other selection, “Conjure Island,” is a fantasy novel that focuses on a young protagonist who is sent to live with her great-grandmother in South Carolina, and contains fantastical elements inspired by Gullah Geechee folklore.
Royce wrote the book in the hopes of more accurately portraying the U.S. South.
When Royce was young, her Northern cousins would come visit to spend the summer with her and her family. “They would get to learn how we did things” and “they would get the Southern experience,” Royce said in an interview with The Herald.
But Royce said many Northerners who don’t visit may have inaccurate understandings of the South.
“A lot of times, it’s shorthand in film when someone speaks with a Southern accent, you’re automatically supposed to assume that this person is undereducated,” she said. She hopes the book will “be informative and help dispel some misconceptions about what it’s like to be a Southerner.”
“I think the act of reading itself is so important, especially in today’s society, because kids are being inundated with other types of media,” Space said. Through books, “they can really build empathy, and they can explore their feelings,” she added.
