National Book Festival Attendance Reaches All-Time High
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By Rocco Staino -- School Library Journal, 9/28/2009 2:00:00 PM
Judy Blume, Jeff Kinney, and Sharon Creech were just some of the 70 authors who showed up at the ninth annual National Book Festival in Washington, DC, on Saturday.
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Author Shannon Hale signing books for fans |
In all, there were more than six tented pavilions representing different reading genres such as fiction and fantasy, poetry and prose, and history and biography. At the children’s pavilion, Jon Scieszka, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and the author of The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales (Viking, 1992), helped kick off the “Exquisite Corpse Adventure,” based on the old game in which people write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold it over to conceal part of it, and pass it on to the next player to do the same. The game ends when someone finishes the story, which is then read aloud.
Sponsored by the Library of Congress’s Center for the Book and the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance, the "Exquisite Corpse Adventure" works this way: Scieszka wrote the first episode, which was then passed on to a cast of writers and illustrators, who must eventually bring the story to an end. Festival attendees and participants in the game include Mary Brigid Barrett, who edited Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out (Candlewick, 2008), Kate DiCamillo, author of The Magician's Elephant (Candlewick, 2009), Nikki Grimes, author of Make Way for Dyamonde Daniel (Putnam, 2009), Shannon Hale, who wrote The Goose Girl (Bloomsbury, 2005), Steven Kellogg, author of The Pied Piper’s Magic (Dial, 2009), and Megan McDonald, who wrote The Rule of Three (Candlewick, 2009).
Every two weeks, there will be a new episode by an author and illustrator, and the story will conclude a year from now.
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Jon Scieszka and Nikki Grimes |
Librarians from around the country were plentiful and enthusiastic to be there. “This is the Texas Book Festival on Speed,” said Amy Simpson, a school librarian with the Georgetown Independent School District outside of Austin, who was thrilled to attend her second festival.
Kay Bowes a public librarian from Newcastle, DE, says she enjoyed seeing the authors talk about their books “It means so much more when you read their work,” says Bowes, who has attended all but one National Book Festival.
The Delaware Valley Elementary School in Milford, PA, sent six roving student reporters to interview authors for their school's morning newscast, while former first daughter, Lynda Johnson Robb, was spotted in the crowd with an armful of books.
The skies opened in the afternoon just in time to hear Mo Willems announce that his popular Knuffle Bunny books will be turned into a musical, and to hear Judy Blume confess that she was a “shy kid afraid of dogs, swimming…everything” and that she made up her book reports.
If you couldn’t attend this year’s festival, the Library of Congress has it available for one week on their Web site. A Young Reader Tool Kit is also available, which features information about the authors who participated in the festival including podcasts of their readings, teaching tools, and activities.
Some authors who turned out were oldtimers and first-timers. School Library Journal caught up with some to hear their thoughts about this year’s festival.
Jacqueline Woodson, whose books have won Newbery and Caldecott Honors and Coretta Scott King awards. Her latest book, Peace Locomotion (Putnam, 2009), is about a 12-year-old boy who is separated from his sister and placed with a foster family.
“I’ve been invited other years (to the National Book Festival), but that was under the old administration. I understand that this year it is the largest number of authors. The presentations are amazing! They are huge, huge! They all couldn’t know my work but they all stayed.”
Six roving reporters from the Delaware Valley Elementary School in Milford, PA
Tony DiTerlizzi, a 2002 Caldecott Honor illustrator for The Spider & the Fly (2002) who has just completed with Holly Black the last book in the "Spiderwick Chronicles," entitled The Wyrm King (2009, all S & S).
“A lollapalooza of books and free! It’s multigenerational, moms and dads having fun with their kids. Today’s family dialogues will lead to others. It’s John Grisham to Mo Willems and everything in between.”
Holly Black, cocreator of the "Spiderwick Chronicles," will have a collection of short fiction entitled The Poison Eaters (Small Bear, 2010) coming out in the spring. The collection takes readers on a tour of a faerie market and introduces a girl who is poisonous to the touch and another who challenges the devil to a competitive eating match.
“It’s the largest number of people in one place who love books.”
Rick Riordan, author of the best-selling "Percy Jackson & the Olympians" series (Hyperion). View Rick Riordan comments
Patrick Carman, author of The Black Circle (2009), the newest installment in the best-selling multimedia adventure series "The 39 Clues." His multimedia "ghost story" Skeleton Creek (2009, all Scholastic) was published this year. View Patrick Carman comments
