Seventeen Books for Year 17: Acera Reads!

by Dr. Heather J. Pinedo-Burns, Head of School

Seventeen is a special number. It is a prime number, as well as a Fermat prime number. It is also known as the most “un-random” number: when people are asked to choose a number between 1 and 20, 17 is the number they are most likely to choose. Personally, 17 is my favorite number and has been for some time. This year also marks Acera’s 17th year. Quite a special number indeed.

17 books. 17 years. One community. To celebrate, as any good former English teacher may, I am inviting our greater Acera community to join me in a reading challenge: let’s read 17 books during our 17th year together.

At our Community Gathering on Wednesday, we introduced Acera Reads: 17 Books for Year 17. The challenge is simple: Can every person in our community read 17 books this school year? What that looks like will be different for every person, from our youngest readers in Room 1 to our oldest students in Room 2, and everyone should read at their own level and in ways that are meaningful to them.

I hope students will use the challenge as an invitation to explore, read different authors, genres, perspectives, styles, and forms. I ask students to read something they know they will love, read something new. Read something fun. Something beautiful. Something difficult. Read something that makes you curious or changes the way you see the world. Read something that makes you want to turn to the person next to you and say, “You’ve got to read this.”

Seventeen books may sound like a lot, but it works out to a little more than one book every two weeks across the school year.

Books can be tracked through our Acera Reads: 17 Books for Year 17 - Reading Challenge Book Log, completed by students or families depending on a student’s age and your family’s preferences. Students are welcome to use this form with each book they read, it will automatically tally their texts.

And there’s one more piece to this challenge. We’re going to see which class can become the first class where every single person has read 17 books. And when that happens… there will be a mystery experience. We will also be sure to celebrate the individual accomplishments along the way as well as each class as they work towards their shared goal. If your child wants to suggest an idea for possible class experiences, I’d love to hear them!

Why we read: the importance of literacy. I have also been thinking a lot lately about why we read. I recently came across an article The End of Reading Is Here - The Atlantic exploring what the author describes as our emerging “post-literate” society and the profound ways that reading has shaped us as humans. The piece offers an important reminder: reading is not simply a skill we acquire in school. It is a practice that has fundamentally changed how human beings think, communicate, imagine, and understand one another. Reading gives us sustained attention. It asks us to hold ideas in our minds, to make connections, to wrestle with complexity, and to stay with something even when it does not immediately give us an answer. It strengthens the very capacities we value so deeply at Acera: curiosity, critical thinking, imagination, perspective-taking, and the ability to express complex ideas with nuance.

And reading and writing are deeply connected. The more we read, the more we encounter the possibilities of language: the rhythm of a sentence, the complexity of a particular word, the power of a metaphor, the many ways an idea can be expressed. We develop a larger library of possibilities from which to draw when we sit down to write, think, create, and communicate ourselves.

Perhaps most importantly, reading asks us to slow down. In a world increasingly filled with quick answers, short-form content, and constant stimulation, there is something quietly radical about spending time with a book. We practice attention. We practice stamina. We practice being a learner who does not need to know immediately. That feels particularly important for our gifted children, and particularly important for us as adults modeling what it means to be curious, lifelong learners.

So, I hope you’ll join me. Read 17 books. Read them together. Talk about them at dinner. Read aloud, even when your child can read independently. Let your children see you reading. Ask them what they are reading. Recommend a book to someone else in our community. Let a book surprise you. And, if you’re willing, share what you’re reading with us along the way.

To celebrate our 17th year, I asked our Acera staff members to help form the number 17. I hope this image makes you smile, and I hope it reminds us that this challenge is about something bigger than a number. It is about who we are as a community of readers and learners. 17 books. 17 years. One community.

Here’s to all the stories, ideas, questions, and possibilities still ahead. Here’s to Year 17, and counting.