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Literature Director of America's National Endowment for the Arts and programme director of the community reading scheme The Big Read, David Kipen, pledged to eat Harper Lee's To Kill a Mocking Bird if he could not persuade the entire literate population of of Kelleys Island in Lake Erie in Ohio to read it. As it tuned out the 131 residents of the island proved to be a literary-minded lot, so he didn't have to eat the book.

Alison Flood writes in The Guardian that Kipen, had been searching for a town "small enough and brave enough to accept the challenge of dragooning every last literate resident, without exception, into tackling its chosen book". Then he found the four square mile Kelleys Island – population 131. He said that if residents failed to finish Harper Lee's classic novel, he'd eat a copy of the book.

He is quoted. "The prospect of 'terrible indigestion' already has me up nights thinking about it ..." Really? How about choosing another small island, Manhatten, next?

The Guardian
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