FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Texas Center for the Book at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC) is delighted to announce its Texas Great Read titles for 2025. The Center has chosen Matagorda Magic: The Hidden Life of a Texas Bay, written by Kimberly Ridley and illustrated by Rebekah Raye, as the 2025 Texas Great Read Youth Selection. Viva Texas Rivers! Adventures, Misadventures, and Glimpses of Nirvana along Our Storied Waterways, edited by Steven L. Davis and Sam L. Pfiester, is the 2025 Texas Great Read Adult Selection.

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’s festival will be held on Saturday, Sept. 6 in Washington, D.C., and online. Check out the Library of Congress website (www.loc.gov/events/2025-national-book-festival/) for details.

The Texas Center for the Book invites Texans to read Matagorda Magic and Viva Texas Rivers! For more information on the 2025 Texas Great Read Program, visit www.tsl.texas.gov/greatreadtexas.

This summer, the Center will host two video webinars, one for each book, including a video interview with the authors and editors and the opportunity for readers to ask questions. Stay tuned for registration. These events will be free, open to the public and available on TSLAC’s YouTube channel after airing.

Readers are also invited to a Texas Great Reads #TXBookChat LIVE event in October, at the Lorenzo de Zavala State Archives and Library Building at 1201 Brazos St. in Austin. There will be an in-person author talk and an opportunity to purchase the books and have them signed; stay tuned for more details.

About the Youth Selection, Matagorda Magic: The Hidden Life of a Texas Bay
Follow the lives of a resident family of American oystercatchers (shorebirds with bright red-orange bills) as you explore the diversity of an estuary, where rivers meet the sea, in Matagorda Bay. Matagorda Magic: The Hidden Life of a Texas Bay is a beautifully illustrated book for students in grades 3-8 that reveals the importance of estuaries as critical habitats for more than 200 species of resident and migratory birds, including the endangered whooping crane. Matagorda Magic invites young people, their families and teachers to discover the wonder of estuaries through the lives of their animal inhabitants. Sidebars illuminate the fascinating lives of oystercatchers, whooping cranes, oysters, blue crabs, shrimp, spotted seatrout and other animals who depend on estuaries for survival.

Kimberly Ridley is the author of the award-winning children’s books The Secret Stream, The Secret Pool, The Secret Bay and Extreme Survivors: Animals That Time Forgot. She is the former editor of Hope Magazine and has written for many publications, including the Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor and Down East Magazine. 

Rebekah Raye has illustrated numerous children’s books, including The Secret Pool and The Secret Bay. She is the author of The Very Best Bed and Bear-ly There, winner of the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award for Environmental Issues.

Matagorda Magic was published by Texas A&M Press in 2024.

About the Adult Selection, Viva Texas Rivers! Adventures, Misadventures, and Glimpses of Nirvana along Our Storied Waterways
More than the lifeblood of our natural world, Texas rivers have nourished the human spirit for as long as people have gathered on their banks. Many of Texas’ leading writers have had their hearts captured by a river, and they have created sparkling accounts of the waterways they love. Now, editors Steven L. Davis and Sam L. Pfiester have assembled the best of those works into an amazing collection.

Ranging from the desert canyonlands of the Rio Grande to the swampy Big Thicket, from crystal clear Hill Country streams to the Red River’s treacherous quicksand, Viva Texas Rivers! showcases many classic writings along with brand new essays written for this volume. Viva Texas Rivers! brings you as close to the living nirvana of a Texas River as you can get without launching yourself into a canoe and following a great blue heron as it glides just above the breaking rapids, leading you around the bend as the river flows onward toward the best places in our hearts.

Steven L. Davis is the former literary curator of the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University. The author and editor of eight books, his literary honors include the PEN Center Award for Research Nonfiction. He is a past president of the Texas Institute of Letters. 

Sam L. Pfiester is chair of the Wittliff Collections advisory council and is the author of four novels: The Perfect War, The Golden Lane, Solomon’s Temple and Salt Creek.

Viva Texas Rivers! was published by Texas A&M Press in 2021.

Reading the Books
Many libraries across Texas carry copies of Matagorda Magic and Viva Texas Rivers!—we encourage you to check them out! Both titles are also available through E-Read Texas, TSLAC’s statewide program from TSLAC that provides e-books to small and medium-sized public libraries statewide. If your local library is part of this network, you can access the books this way. 

One of 50 state centers affiliated with the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, the Texas Center for the Book is under the direction of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. For more information contact Michele Chan Santos at mcsantos@tsl.texas.gov or visit tsl.texas.gov/centerforthebook.

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The Texas State Library and Archives Commission provides Texans access to the information they need to be informed, productive citizens by preserving the archival record of Texas; enhancing the service capacity of public, academic and school libraries; assisting public agencies in the maintenance of their records; and meeting the reading needs of Texans with disabilities. For more information, visit www.tsl.texas.gov.