Oregon Center for the Book Selects Two Books for the 2025 Roadmap to Reading.

Leslie Barnard Booth’s One Day This Tree Will Fall and Elizabeth Mehren’s I Lived to Tell the World: Stories from Survivors of Holocaust, Genocide, and the Atrocities of War were each selected to represent Oregon at the 2025 National Book Festival in Washington, DC.

Every year, the Library of Congress asks each state Center for the Book to select titles that represent the state’s literary landscape to highlight at the National Book Festival, an event showcasing the importance of books and reading. This year the National Book Festival will be held September 6, 2025. Read more at https://www.loc.gov/bookfest/.

The 2025 Oregon Young Readers’ Selection is Leslie Barnard Booth’s One Day This Tree Will Fall; illustrated by Stephanie Fizer Coleman. This lyrical non-fiction picture book shares the long and winding life cycle of a tree in a forest: from tiny seed to a decaying home for animals and plants. Author Leslie Barnard Booth grew up in the Pacific Northwest, attended Pomona College and later earned an MFA in creative writing and an MS in education from the University of Oregon. Leslie lives in Portland, Oregon, and loves exploring the natural world with her family.

The 2025 Oregon Adult Readers’ Selection is Elizabeth Mehren’s I Lived to Tell the World: Stories from Survivors of Holocaust, Genocide, and the Atrocities of War. I Lived to Tell the World features thirteen inspiring profiles of men and women who have endured unthinkable cruelty, only to resume productive lives in their new homes in Oregon.

Elizabeth Mehren is a Portland-based writer, editor, and educator. Mehren earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at UC Berkeley and has written for national magazines, appeared on television and radio, and received awards for teaching and journalism. After working at The Washington Post, she became a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and later spent a decade on the faculty at Boston University.