Find a book lying around campus. Pick it up. Read it. Pass it on to a friend. Or leave it in the main mall for someone else to read.

That is the premise of Read It Forward, a staple for the McNeil library program.

Things with the program will be a little different this year as the entire district is getting involved. Librarians Amelia Bligh and Laura Falli said money from the H-E-B Excellence in Education Grant was used to fund the purchase of books. Each school will get 10 percent of the school’s population in books. That’s about 230 copies when it comes to McNeil. Students, teachers and administrators are encouraged to read the book and discuss it with each other.

Wonder, by R.J. Palacios, is about a fifth grader who suffers from Treacher Collins syndrome and was homeschooled through the fourth grade. It follows his acceptance into a prep school and his struggles through his first year of public school.

Overall, it spreads a message of acceptance and kindness to all. It has topped the New York Times bestseller list for 27 weeks and received a Texas Bluebonnet award. Bligh and Falli could not stop raving about it.

“We both just fell in love with the story, the characters, the message. It just captured us,” Bligh said.

There are activities planned around the book. The author of the book will be coming to speak at the new Round Rock Indoor Sports Complex (to be completed in December.) Palacios told Bligh and Falli that she felt it was really important to spread around the message of the book as much as possible and was overjoyed at the idea of the Read It Forward program.

Another activity is the theater classes will write and perform skits based on the book to be recorded for various uses such as teaching tools in elementary classrooms.

Bligh and Falli hope the book will change the students’ way of thinking.

“I hope that people stop and think more about their actions” Falli said.

They also wish it would help teens realize that each person has their own struggles and to be nice to each other. The flagship quote for this project is: “If you have the choice between doing what is right and what is kind, choose kind.”