Scieszka, Raschka, Willems Rock Brooklyn Book Festival

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By Rocco Staino -- School Library Journal, 9/15/2008 2:00:00 PM

Downtown Brooklyn was abuzz on Sunday as more than 20,000 people gathered for the third annual Brooklyn Book Festival, where Jon Scieszka, Susan Cooper, Patricia MacLachlan, Chris Raschka, Mo Willems, Betsy Lewin, and other stars in children’s literature were on hand to help celebrate the love of reading.

“I can’t believe how much this event has grown in merely three years,” said

Jacqueline Woodson, son Jackson

Jacqueline Woodson, a Newbery Honor recipient and Brooklyn native, who attended the event with her entire family, a friend, a houseguest, and fellow author, An Na.

Young adult author David Levithan, whose book Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (Knopf, 2006) hits the big screen on October 3; Sarah Mlynowski, coauthor of How to Be Bad (HarperTeen, 2008); and Alisa Valdes-Rodriquez, author of Haters (Little, Brown, 2006) took to the "Youth Stoop" to take questions and talk about books that deal with teen identity.

The book festival started three years ago after the demise of the long-running "New York is Book Country." The festival, which took place at Brooklyn’s Borough Hall and the adjacent plaza, also featured notables in adult literature, such as Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin, and Joan Didion.

Chris Raschka

Target sponsored the children’s area, where kids designed their own book bag and heard John Bemelmans Marciano and others read from their latest works. Target sponsors similar children’s reading areas at other book festivals across the country as part of the company’s “Give Back to the Community” program.