Teen Book Group- Author Discussion with Ryan Estrada

About this event

Join the Teen Book Group’s author talk with Ryan Estrada- artist, adventurer, and co-author of The Banned Book Club. This event is open to all ages.

When: Friday, April 14, 2023 at 4pm

Ryan will be joining the meeting virtually all the way from South Korea. Join us in person at the library or virtually to discuss our book of the month.

Register here.

About the book

When Kim Hyun Sook started college in 1983 she was ready for her world to open up. After acing her exams and sort-of convincing her traditional mother that it was a good idea for a woman to go to college, she looked forward to soaking up the ideas of Western Literature far from the drudgery she was promised at her family’s restaurant. But literature class would prove to be just the start of a massive turning point, still focused on reading but with life-or-death stakes she never could have imagined.

This was during South Korea’s Fifth Republic, a military regime that entrenched its power through censorship, torture, and the murder of protestors. In this charged political climate, with Molotov cocktails flying and fellow students disappearing for hours and returning with bruises, Hyun Sook sought refuge in the comfort of books. When the handsome young editor of the school newspaper invited her to his reading group, she expected to pop into the cafeteria to talk about Moby Dick, Hamlet, and The Scarlet Letter. Instead she found herself hiding in a basement as the youngest member of an underground banned book club. And as Hyun Sook soon discovered, in a totalitarian regime, the delights of discovering great works of illicit literature are quickly overshadowed by fear and violence as the walls close in.

In Banned Book Club, Hyun Sook shares a dramatic true story of political division, fear-mongering, anti-intellectualism, the death of democratic institutions, and the relentless rebellion of reading.

About Ryan

Ryan Estrada is the co-author of The Banned Book Club, Poorcraft Wish You Were Here; The Tightwad’s Guide to Travel, Student Ambassador: The Missing Dragon, and more. He is also the creator of the comics AKI Alliance, Broken Telephone, and more.

When Ryan is not writing or drawing, he can often be found adventuring. His travels have led him to: gator wrangler in America, an ambassador to Australia, an undocumented animator in Canada, a ghostbuster in South Korea, a Bollywood star in India, wandered Kim Jong Il’s secret tunnels to North Korea, slept on a bench in a typhoon in Japan, dug toilets for tsunami victims in Thailand, did an accidental illegal border crossing into Burma, made road comics in Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, Vietnam and The Phillippines, documentaries in Colombia and Ecuador, and podcasts in Malaysia, ran with the bulls in Mexico, hunted lost hyena skulls in Kenya, climbed Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, got caught in a Peruvian coca war, lived on a Costa Rican rainforest and a Panamanian volcano.

To learn more about Ryan and to view some of his work visit his website, ryanestrada.com

About the Teen Book Group@

Join us on Friday afternoons from 4pm to 5pm to discuss the teen book of the month. This is a group for teens and young adults (ages 13 to 19) who enjoy exploring a wide variety of fiction and nonfiction titles by diverse authors. Copies of the book are available at the library.

View the schedule below for a sneak-peak of our upcoming meetings. Contact cmills@clpvd.org for any questions or concerns.

Do you have a book you have been wanting to read? Make a recommendation for a title to read at one of our upcoming meetings using the form below. We will discuss recommendations at our next meeting.

Teen Book Group Recommendation Form

Upcoming Meetings:

• May 12, 2023
• June 9, 2023