Read/Create: A Novel Idea Exhibit Opening

This year’s Novel Idea: Read/Create exhibit features artwork inspired by the 2026 titles Super Sonic by Thomas Kohnstamm and the youth edition, Hope in The Valley by Mitali Perkens. The exhibit opens Saturday, April 11 through June 13, 2026.

Super Sonic launches readers into a kaleidoscopic tale of the generations of interrelated families who breathed life into a small, hilltop community near Seattle. The story cuts in time from the arrival of white settlers’ ships to the last indigenous landowner fighting to hold on to scraps of his ancestral home. It interweaves an opioid-addicted nineteenth-century conman-cum-civic booster, a disgraced Navy seaman building an airplane that travels faster than sound, a stay-at-home dad hustling to open the city’s first legal weed shop, and a Japanese internment survivor.

Hope in The Valley follows twelve-year-old Indian-American Pandita Paul, who doesn’t like change. She’s not ready to start middle school and leave the comforts of childhood behind. Most of all, Pandita doesn’t want to feel like she’s leaving her mother, who died a few years ago, behind. Pandita is planning to spend most of her summer break reading in her favorite place, the abandoned but majestic mansion across the street. When the town announces that the old home will be bulldozed in favor of new, maybe affordable, housing, Pandita must find her voice and the strength to move on in order to give her community hope.

“Passage of Place” by Cindy O’Neal

“How We Cope with Change” by Gaye Lawson

Central Oregon’s own Mt Bachelor Quilt Guild members have been hard at work creating original artwork for the exhibit. Over 20 quilts will be on display, representing personal interpretations of this year’s book selections.

Visitors receive free admission by showing their library card for the duration of the exhibit.

Click Here for more information about this year’s Novel Idea programming