Saratoga Reads!
2025 Reading Season

This event can be attended on-demand at any time. Join Ms. Heather for a special holiday storytime related to our Saratoga READS! selection!

Inspired by our Saratoga Reads selection, join educator and performer Karlus Trapp as he celebrates Martin Luther King Day by taking you on a joyful 100-year interactive journey!

Throughout history, art has been used as a powerful means of creative expression. Learn how art has been used for social change and conversation and how you can participate in a year-long initiative of community arts projects.

This is an ongoing event that lasts through the end of September, 2021. If you haven’t yet started participating in the Read Woke Challenge, with our Saratoga READS! Junior book title, now is a great time to start! By participating, you can earn chances to be entered into quarterly drawings for possiible prizes!

From the New York Times Book Review ‘New and Notable’ section:

This vast anthology gathers voices both canonical and overlooked to build an implicit but unassailable case that Black poetry is central to American literature.

This is an ongoing event that lasts through March 13. The program is for children to do a random act for someone else to make all feel welcome.

Inspired by the animals featured in the SaratogaReads! Jr book selection, join us on a Scavenger Hunt for animal tracks and other signs of winter at Camp Saratoga.

Join, virtually, the C.R.E.A.T.E. Community Studios team - who use art to promote freedom of expression, personal growth, and community connection - to craft a uniquely compelling piece of art, inspired by the Saratoga READS! Junior book selection!

Saratoga Book Festival, Saratoga Springs Public Library, and Skidmore College are pleased to present this SaratogaREADS! event featuring Dr. Andre M. Perry, Senior Fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, and author of Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities, in conversation with Dr. Amon Emeka, Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the First Year Experience at Skidmore College.

This program is inspired by our Saratoga READS! Junior selection which features tree-dwelling animals. Learn owl calls and then go for an Owl Prowl walk to listen for these nighttime predators!

Join, virtually, the C.R.E.A.T.E. Community Studios team - who use art to promote freedom of expression, personal growth, and community connection - to craft a uniquely compelling piece of art, inspired by the Saratoga READS! Junior book selection!

Books and Tea Meets to discuss this year’s Saratoga READS! selction, Saratoga Soul Brandtville Blues by Carol Daggs, and the SaratogaREADS! Junior Companion Selection, Wishtree by Katherine Applegate.

Join our guests, Paul and Mary Liz Stewart, who will give an overview of the Underground Railroad Education Center, and highlight figures and events in our local history. This program is inspired by our SaratogaREADS! book selection, Saratoga Soul, Brandtville Blues by Carol Daggs.

This program is inspired by our Saratoga READS! Junior selection which features tree-dwelling animals. Learn owl calls and then go for an Owl Prowl walk to listen for these nighttime predators!

To celebrate the birthday (2/21) and life of civil rights leader, Rep. John Lewis, who passed away in 2020, we’ll read and discuss part one of his graphic novel memoir, March.

This program is inspired by our Saratoga READS! Junior selection which features tree-dwelling animals. Learn owl calls and then go for an Owl Prowl walk to listen for these nighttime predators!

This program is inspired by our Saratoga READS! Junior selection which features tree-dwelling animals. Learn owl calls and then go for an Owl Prowl walk to listen for these nighttime predators!

This program is inspired by our Saratoga READS! Junior selection which features tree-dwelling animals. Learn owl calls and then go for an Owl Prowl walk to listen for these nighttime predators!

THIS PROGRAM IS NOW FULL.

You’re invited to participate in this 2-session Junior Discussion program in cooperation with Skidmore College! Those who register will receive a free copy, to keep, of this year’s book choice, Wishtree, by Katherine Applegate!

THIS PROGRAM IS NOW FULL.

You’re invited to participate in this 2-session Junior Discussion program in cooperation with Skidmore College! Those who register will receive a free copy, to keep, of this year’s book choice, Wishtree, by Katherine Applegate!

With selections related to our season’s reading book choice, Books and Tea Meets to discuss The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Genealogy, or the study of family history, has been described as the “fastest-growing hobby in America”. Join us for a basic genealogy course so we can get you started with your family history!

Ron Wimberly’s graphic novel, Black History in its Own Words, is a portrait collection combining vibrant, dynamic illustrations of acclaimed black celebrities and personalities with notable quotations, that tells grand stories with an economy of language.

Over the course of nearly 50 years in the music business, Billy Cole has become a personal friend and respected musical instrument repairman for some of the top musicians in the industry. His small music shop on Phila Street next to Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs serves as a welcoming haven for musicians, including jazz, rock and classical musicians performing at SPAC and other area venues. Come join this informative and heartfelt interview of the local craftsman, neighbor, and business owner.

Belarus, formerly a part of the Soviet Union known as White Russia, is seldom visited by Americans. Join Rhona Koretzky for her own story of family history. In 2010, she and her husband traveled to Belarus to visit the birthplaces of her grandparents and previous generations.

Saratoga artist Daesha Devón Harris presents “I’ve Got a Home,” her captivating series of vividly visual photographs inspired by her hometown.

For African Americans issues of social justice and family have always been deeply intertwined. Librarians Lorie Wies and Julie O’Connor will present the narrative of the Lattimore family - a local African American family whose lives and activities influenced American history from the Revolutionary War through the early 20th Century.

Torn between the social power that came from white heritage while burdened by the stigmas that came with having dark skin. Living in a split world, learn how Douglass Carr Cunningham’s family background spun an interesting picture of being part of two very distinct worlds through his own research and discoveries!