The Findlay-Hancock County Public Library is partnering with the Hancock Historical Museum to announce the selection of The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio by Terry Ryan as the CommunityREAD 2026 book. This year’s selection ties into America 250, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and Ohio’s celebratory theme of Ohio Goes to the Movies.
The feature event this year will be a lecture by Dr. Cortland Rankin, of the Department of Theatre and Film at Bowling Green State University, on March 20th at the Winebrenner Auditorium at the University of Findlay. He will be discussing the book and the Rust Belt, and Ohio in film at 6 pm. Then, at 7 pm, there will be a presentation of the movie based on the book. Tickets are not required this year, as this is a free public event.
The book tells the story of stepping back into a time when fledgling advertising agencies were active partners with consumers, and everyday people saw possibility in every coupon, and how the author’s mother kept the family afloat by writing jingles and contest entries. She shares how her mother’s winning ways defied the Church, her alcoholic husband, and antiquated views of housewives. To her mother, flouting convention was a small price to pay when it came to securing a happy home for her six sons and four daughters. Evelyn, the author’s mother, who would surely be a Madison Avenue executive if she were working today, composed her jingles not in the boardroom, but at the ironing board.
Graced with a rare appreciation for life's inherent hilarity, Evelyn turned every financial challenge into an opportunity for fun and profit. From her frenetic supermarket shopping spree—worth $3,000 today—to her clever entries worthy of Erma Bombeck, Dorothy Parker, and Ogden Nash, the story of this irrepressible woman whose talents reached far beyond her formidable verbal skills is told in The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio with an infectious joy that shows how a winning spirit will triumph over the poverty of circumstance.
CommunityREAD 2026, Dr. Rankin’s presentation, and the movie presentation are funded by the Friends of the Findlay-Hancock County Public Library, business and private sponsors, and the library’s general fund.
CommunityREAD is a month-long community event that encourages reading and promotes the benefits of literacy. It was originally created by the Findlay-Hancock County Community Foundation in 2003. The administration of CommunityREAD was assumed by the library in 2012. Each year, a different book is chosen and read by community members. Various events are planned throughout the month of March at the library and throughout the community to celebrate literacy. For more information on CommunityREAD, please call us at 419-422-1712.
Discussion Questions
- Some of the prizes Evelyn won through contesting included “an automatic coffeemaker, a Deepfreeze home freezer, a Westinghouse refrigerator, a Motorola radio, two wall clocks, three wool blankets, a box of household tools, a set of kitchen appliances, and three pairs of Arthur Murray shoes” (51). Would you consider these “prizes” today? What sorts of things can you win through modern contests and game shows?
- “Mike set the cot on fire!” (48) is probably the last thing you want to hear the first time you’re left alone in charge of the house. What else goes wrong when “Tuffy” has to babysit her brothers and sisters? How does she handle it?
- When the family called their parish priest during one of Dad’s outbursts, we read that “Father’s [the Priest’s] message to Mom was clear. He expected Mom and the rest of us to endure Dad’s behavior and “keep the family whole.” According to the church, putting up with an alcoholic and abusive husband was considered at best a woman’s lot and at worst her fault” (79). Do you think that times have changed, or do people still think this way? Is there anywhere families or those in need can go for help in your community?
- How did baseball help the Ryan family through tough times? Have sports played a similar role in your own life?
- When Sister Joan Marie suggested that Evelyn start taking in laundry rather than put her time, faith, and effort into contesting, why do you think Evelyn refused? Was it the stereotypes surrounding “desperate” Irish housewives, the fact that she had ruined her own clothes after forgetting she’d left donuts in the dryer, or did Evelyn have a sense of pride in her “knack for words” (113)? How do you think contesting affected her sense of self-worth and her morale?
- Can you use the “four unofficial rules” for 25-words-or-less entries to finish the rhyme below?
- Make your statement
- Use a conjunction like “yet,” “while,” or “so”
- Use a series of three nouns (“the mystic three),
- Include an unusual word or turn of phrase, preferably at the end. (195)
I really love my library
I use it every day
Costs so little, helps so much
_______________________________
Was this exercise easier or harder than you imagined it would be?
- At the end of the book, we learn that “Dad” saved $60,000 in pension checks and left it all to Evelyn. Terry refers to this as “a legacy of atonement that stunned my mother and all of their children” (338). Why was everyone so shocked? Do you think this gesture was enough to truly atone for his previous actions throughout the book? Why or why not?
- When asked whether she regretted not going to Defiance College, Evelyn replies “I want you to know that I don’t regret any part of my life…including marrying Dad. I wouldn’t trade any one of you kids for a whole illustrious career. Besides” – she smiled – “without the ten of you, what would I do for material?” (287). Leaving her mother with the Affadaisies shortly thereafter, Terry concludes “Mom…hadn’t left her career behind those many years ago after all. She took it with her wherever she went” (289). What do you think Terry means by that? Do you ever feel as though you passed up the opportunity to do or be something great, something different than you are now? Is there a way you could “take it with you” somehow or way that you have already taken it with you?
Read-Alikes
Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls
"Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did." So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, Jeannette Walls's no nonsense, resourceful, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town -- riding five hundred miles on her pony, alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car ("I loved cars even more than I loved horses. They didn't need to be fed if they weren't working, and they didn't leave big piles of manure all over the place") and fly a plane. And, with her husband Jim, she ran a vast ranch in Arizona.
Chapel Veils, Cough Drops and Queen for a Day: Being a Kid in the 1950's by Barbara Lockard
Were you a daredevil bicyclist in the 1950s? Did you collect pop bottles, lick Top Value Stamps and help the nuns fight the communist menace? Join author Barbara Lockard as she humorously re-visits her childhood on the west side of Cincinnati, Ohio. Containing Barb's popular weekly blog posts, if this book doesn't cause you to laugh out loud, it may at least bring a wide grin or two!
Rust: A Memoir of Steel and Grit by Eliese Colette Goldbach
To ArcelorMittal Steel Eliese is known as #6691: Utility Worker, but this was never her dream. Fresh out of college, eager to leave behind her conservative hometown and come to terms with her Christian roots, Eliese found herself applying for a job at the local steel mill. The mill is everything she was trying to escape, but it's also her only shot at financial security in an economically devastated and forgotten part of America. In Rust, Eliese brings the reader inside the belly of the mill and the middle American upbringing that brought her there in the first place.
A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel
When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965, Mooreland, Indiana, was a sleepy little hamlet of three hundred people. Nicknamed "Zippy" for the way she would bolt around the house, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears. In this witty and lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back to a time when small-town America was caught in the amber of the innocent postwar period–people helped their neighbors, went to church on Sunday, and kept barnyard animals in their backyards.
What Makes A Good CommunityREAD Book?
When looking for possible CommunityREAD titles, we are searching for books with several important qualities. First, since the foundation of CommunityREAD is the idea that community members will read a book and then share it with others, the book needs to provide topics to discuss. This should be a topic, or topics, that could appeal to a wide audience. The best books will have something of interest to both men and women and adults of all ages and life stages. While no one book will appeal to everyone, we look to appeal to as many as possible.
A CommunityREAD title should also be an enjoyable read. The writing should be of good quality and the plotline should engage the reader. Extremely lengthy titles can be intimidating to some. Also, because CommunityREAD is celebrated over the course of one month, the length of the book should allow the average reader to read it during the 30-day period. We believe a reasonable length is 350 to 400 pages.
To keep the cost reasonable for both the library budget and for readers who purchase their own copies of the book, the selected title needs to be available in paperback.
I Just Read A Great Book. How Can I Recommend It For CommunityREAD?
We love to hear about great books! If you’ve read something you think would make a good CommunityREAD book, please tell us about it. Any library staff member will be happy to pass your title along to the Staff Selection Committee.
Previous CommunityREAD Selections
- 2003 Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom and The Fall of Freddie the Leaf by Leo Buscaglia
- 2004 The Traveler’s Gift by Andy Andrews and The Traveler’s Gift by Mark Kimball Moulton
- 2005 Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam and Blueberries for the Queen by John and Katherine Patterson
- 2006 To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee and The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson
- 2007 Pay It Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde and Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed written by Emily Pearson
- 2008 The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis and The Lady in the Box by Ann McGovern
- 2009 Marley & Me, Marley, A Dog Like No Other, and Bad Dog, Marley! all by John Grogan
- 2010 Teach with Your Heart by Erin Gruwell, The View from Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg, Thank You, Mr. Falker by Patricia Polacco and Don’t Be Silly Mrs. Millie by Judy Cox
- 2011 Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford, Best Friends Forever by Beverly Patt, A Place Where Sunflowers Grow by Amy Lee-Tai and Yoko’s Paper Cranes by Rosemary Wells
- 2012 Still Alice by Lisa Genova, The Graduation of Jake Moon by Barbara Park and Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox
- 2013 The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgson Burnett, The Boy Who Grew Flowers by Jen Wojtowicz and Flower Garden by Even Bunting
- 2014 The Help by Kathryn Stockett, The Lions of Little Rock by Kristin Levine, Child of the Civil Rights Movement by Paula Young Shelton, and Raul Colon and Back of the Bus by Aaron Reynolds
- 2015 Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff, I Survived: Bombing of Pearl Harbor, 1941 by Lauren Tarshis, I'm the Scariest Thing in the Jungle! by David G. Derrick, Jr., Jungle of Bones by Ben Mikaelsen
- 2016 The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez, Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai, The Quiet Place by Sarah Stewart, Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match by Monica Brown
- 2017 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey, The 7 Habits of Happy Kids by Sean Covey, The 7 Habits of Happy Kids Collection by Sean Covey
- 2018 Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, Nana in the City by Lauren Castillo, Maddie’s Fridge by Lois Brandt, Wish by Barbara O’Connor, Small as an Elephant by Jennifer Richard Jacobson
- 2019 The Only Child by Rhiannon Navin , The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld, The Distance to Home by Paula Saunders, Lost in the Sun by Lisa Graff
- 2020/2021 Before We Were Yours and The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate, A Home for Leo by Vin Vogel, Just Right Family by Silvia Lopez, Three Pennies by Melanie Crowder, Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan, Where Are You From? by Yamile Saied Méndez, Some Places More Than Others by Renée Watson, Clean Getaway by Nic Stone
- 2022 Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson, Shhh! The Baby's Asleep by JaNay Brown-Wood, Saturday by Oge Mora, Ann Fights for Freedom by Nikki Shannon Smith, Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia, and Copper Sun by Sharon M. Draper
- 2023 The Invisible Husband of Frick Island by Colleen Oakley, We Forgot Brock by Carter Goodrich, High and Dry by Eric Walters, Caterpillar Summer by Gillian McDunn, The Line Tender by Kate Allen, We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
- 2024 Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly, Hello, Star by Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic, Hidden Figures (Picture Book) by Margot Lee Shetterly, Eclipse by Andy Rash, Hidden Figures (Young Readers) by Margot Lee Shetterly, Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
- 2025 Gaining Ground by Forrest Pritchard, Here are the Seeds, by JaNay Brown-Wood, Amara's Farm by JaNay Brown-Wood, Stepping Stones by Lucy Knisley, The Labors of Hercules Beal by Gary D. Schmidt, Bend in the Road by Sara Biren