One Nation. Still Reading. Still Free.

For 250 years, stories, ideas, and access to information have shaped who we are. Libraries protect that freedom by ensuring everyone can explore, learn, and discover without barriers.

This collection celebrates that right while raising funds for the Opening Day Collection at Cherry Lane. Each design tells part of the story: a flag design featuring the preamble, reimagined for us as free readers; Liberty Lives in Libraries, a reminder of where access begins; the One Nation eagle with ?Still Reading. Still Free.?, reflecting that no matter what we read, we remain connected; and a map of the United States formed by the names of American authors from the past 250 years, honoring the voices that have shaped our stories and those still to come.

Featuring the names of 70 American authors woven together to form the shape of the United States, this design celebrates the many voices, regions, genres, and generations that have shaped American literature over the past 250 years. From poets, playwrights, and essayists to science fiction writers, novelists, memoirists, and storytellers, the collection reflects a wide range of perspectives and experiences that continue to define the American story.

Handwritten elements layered throughout the design bring a personal quality to the piece, like notes written in the margins of your favorite book, reminding us that stories are not only preserved through time but shared from reader to reader across generations.

Featured Authors (& Recommended Reading):

Foundational Voices & Early America

Benjamin Franklin ? Poor Richard?s Almanack, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Washington Irving ? The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle

American Renaissance & 19th Century Literature

Edgar Allan Poe ? The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart

Ralph Waldo Emerson ? Nature, Self-Reliance

Henry David Thoreau ? Walden, Civil Disobedience

Nathaniel Hawthorne ? The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables

Walt Whitman ? Starting from Paumanok, Song of Myself ( both from Leaves of Grass)

Herman Melville ? Moby-Dick, Bartleby, the Scrivener

Harriet Beecher Stowe ? Uncle Tom?s Cabin, Oldtown Folks

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ? Paul Revere?s Ride, The Song of Hiawatha

Emily Dickinson ? Because I Could Not Stop for Death, Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

Mark Twain ? Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Kate Chopin ? The Awakening, Bayou Folk

Early Modern America

W.E.B. Du Bois ? The Souls of Black Folk, Black Reconstruction in America

Edith Wharton ? The Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome

Jack London ? The Call of the Wild, White Fang

Robert Frost ? The Road Not Taken, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Ezra Pound ? Cathay, In a Station of the Metro

Willa Cather ? My ?ntonia, O Pioneers!

F. Scott Fitzgerald ? The Great Gatsby, Tender Is the Night

Ernest Hemingway ? The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms

William Faulkner ? The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying

Zora Neale Hurston ? Their Eyes Were Watching God, Barracoon

John Steinbeck ? The Grapes of Wrath, Travels with Charley in Search of America

Pearl S. Buck ? The Good Earth, Dragon Seed

Langston Hughes ? The Weary Blues, Montage of a Dream Deferred

Gwendolyn Brooks ? Annie Allen, A Street in Bronzeville

Booth Tarkington ? The Magnificent Ambersons, Alice Adams

Laura Ingalls Wilder ? Little House on the Prairie, On the Banks of Plum Creek

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings ? The Yearling, Cross Creek

Mid-Century American Voices

Tennessee Williams ? A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie

Ralph Ellison ? Invisible Man, Shadow and Act

Ray Bradbury ? Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles

J.D. Salinger ? The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey

Arthur Miller ? Death of a Salesman, The Crucible

James Baldwin ? Go Tell It on the Mountain, The Fire Next Time

Harper Lee ? To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman

Sylvia Plath ? The Bell Jar, Ariel

Kurt Vonnegut ? Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat?s Cradle

Flannery O?Connor ? A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Wise Blood

Mari Evans ? I Am a Black Woman, Nightstar: 1973?1978

Beverly Cleary ? Ramona Quimby, Age 8; Henry Huggins

Ken Kesey ? One Flew Over the Cuckoo?s Nest, Sometimes a Great Notion

Frank Herbert ? Dune, Dune Messiah

Maya Angelou ? I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, And Still I Rise

N. Scott Momaday ? The Way to Rainy Mountain, House Made of Dawn

Hunter S. Thompson ? Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hell?s Angels

Contemporary & Expanding American Voices

Joan Didion ? The Year of Magical Thinking, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Toni Morrison ? Beloved, Song of Solomon

Rudolfo Anaya ? Bless Me, Ultima; Heart of Aztl?n

Larry McMurtry ? Lonesome Dove, Terms of Endearment

Sandra Cisneros ? The House on Mango Street, Woman Hollering Creek

Alice Walker ? The Color Purple, In Search of Our Mothers? Gardens

Stephen King ? The Shining, It

Louise Erdrich ? Love Medicine, The Night Watchman

Amy Tan ? The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God?s Wife

Barbara Kingsolver ? The Poisonwood Bible, Demon Copperhead

Sherman Alexie ? The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Annie Proulx ? The Shipping News, Brokeback Mountain

Joyce Carol Oates ? We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde

Octavia Butler ? Kindred, Parable of the Sower

Alberto R?os ? The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body, A Good Map of All Things

Brandon Sanderson ? Mistborn, The Way of Kings

Jeffrey Eugenides ? Middlesex, The Virgin Suicides

Anthony Doerr ? All the Light We Cannot See, Cloud Cuckoo Land

Andre Dubus III ? House of Sand and Fog, Townie

Cormac McCarthy ? The Road, All the Pretty Horses

Marilynne Robinson ? Gilead, Housekeeping

Bill Bryson ? A Walk in the Woods, A Short History of Nearly Everything

Joy Harjo ? An American Sunrise, She Had Some Horses

One Nation. Still Reading. Still Free.

Explore the full We the Readers collection in our ONLINE STORE. For more information about the campaign, including our summer book club and giveaway series, visit supportmld.org/250.

All proceeds from this campaign support new books for the Meridian Library District.