Enrich your fall 24 course readings with the powerful story of this year's Buffs One Read selection: Solito: A Memoir, by Javier Zamora. Instructional faculty and staff can engage their first-year students in community building with the University Libraries Canvas course and research guide about the New York Times best selling story of courage and resilience.
Use the Canvas course Access the research guide
Solito is the story of Zamora’s three-thousand-mile journey to be reunited with his parents, starting in his small town in El Salvador, traveling through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border. It was selected from a short list of five titles as best fitting this year’s Buffs One Read theme of Courage.
The Canvas course and the research guide provide chapter summaries, discussion questions, thematic activities and additional resources to support student engagement. They were created by teaching and research faculty in the Libraries. Readers can follow Zamora’s journey with an interactive map. Instructional faculty and staff may invite students to join the course or they can copy the content into their own Canvas courses.
“Faculty can help foster community and engagement by reading the Buffs One Read book with our students in our courses,” said Shelly Miller, professor of Mechanical Engineering and chair of the Boulder Faculty Assembly. “I look forward to learning all the ways that my colleagues embrace this opportunity to read with their students this story of perseverance and grit. I plan to read Solito and use the instructional resources in my Engineering First Year seminar course next fall semester.”
Solito is available from the University Libraries in ebook and audio formats.
Buffs One Read is a campus reading program sponsored by the University Libraries that is now entering its fourth year. It is specifically aimed at first-year and transfer students to help them make connections during their first semester on campus, but it is open to the entire campus community and we encourage everyone to participate.
“The Buffs One Read is an excellent way for first-year and transfer students to join the campus community and build upon our one read traditions,” said Robert H. McDonald, dean of the University Libraries and senior vice provost of Online and Extended Education. “The University Libraries are dedicated to providing students with opportunities to discover perspectives that broaden their worldview and to enable campus annual traditions that build community and a sense of belonging among students.”