PUSHING THE LIMITS OF PERSISTENCE
To persist is to endure. To last over time - even against the odds. Examples are everywhere: A persistent person weathers physical, emotional, or environmental setbacks and keeps trying. Elements that persist in the world around us connect us to a certain place, to an event, or to our past. We can read history in canyons carved by unstoppable rivers. Enduring artifacts and memories can wrench or lift our hearts. Put simply, PERSISTENCE expands the human experience in myriad ways.
Read the featured book
Watch the persistence-themed featured video
Jumpstart your group conversation with our discussion questions
Pick a new themed topic, and repeat!
FEATURED BOOK
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
In boyhood, Louis Zamperini was an incorrigible delinquent. As a teenager, he channeled his defiance into running, discovering a...
Available In English & Spanish
Discussion Questions
FEATURED VIDEO
Pushing the Limits
of Persistence
Being really good isn’t quite good enough for Ricardo Peña. He sets an ambitious goal for himself. Then he trains relentlessly and pushes through obstacles, persisting until he makes the improbable happen. One day, high up on a mountain while pursuing...
Watch in Spanish
w/ English Subtitles
Take a look at the other offerings below, curated for this theme. How do people push the limits of persistence in each book or video? The joy is in the discovery! Making those connections as you read will enrich your follow-up conversations.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
It is a tale of revolution, of the rebellion of the former Lunar penal colony against the Lunar Authority that controls it from Earth. It is the tale of the disparate people--a computer technician, a vigorous young female agitator, and an elderly academic--who...
Available In English and Spanish
Discussion Questions
Raising My Hand in Spanish-Language Media
Watch in English
Maybe you’ve seen the major motion picture based on this book. Trapper and tracker, Hugh Glass, is mauled by a bear. Against all odds, he rallies and drags himself through hundreds of wilderness miles to seek revenge on the men who left him there to...
Discussion Questions
Available In English and Spanish
Waiting on the Bounty
Though she had only a fifth-grade education, Mary Knackstedt Dyck faithfully kept a diary. Written with pencil on lined notebook paper, her daily notations tell the story of farm life on the far western border of Kansas during the grim Dust Bowl years. Manuscript diaries from this era and region are extremely rare and those
Available In English
Discussion Questions
Into Thin Air:
A Personal Account of
the Mt. Everest Disaster
Available In English and Spanish
A bank of clouds was assembling on the not-so-distant horizon, but journalist-mountaineer Jon Krakauer, standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, saw nothing that "suggested that a murderous storm was bearing down." He was...
Discussion Questions
How to Practice Effectively...for Just
About Anything
Mastering a physical skill requires practice. In other words, the repetition of an action whose purpose is improvement. It helps us perform with more ease, speed and security. But why does practice make us better? Educators Annie Bosler and Don Greene explain how...
Watch in Spanish w/ English Subtitles
In this award-winning, heart-stopping adventure story, a 13-year-old boy is left the only survivor after his plane crash-lands in a forest. And his world only gets worse from there. He endures a constant barrage of nature’s fury with only a hatchet
to keep him alive.
At first consumed by despair
Available In English and Spanish
Hatchet
Discussion Questions
Six Years in Captivity
Watch in Spanish w/ English subtitles
In 2002, the Colombian guerrilla movement known as the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) kidnapped Ingrid Betancourt in the middle of her presidential campaign. For the next six years, Betancourt was held hostage in jungle prison camps where she was ravaged by malaria, fleas, hunger, and human...