This is what it looked like when they opened the doors at 10:00…
…and what it looked like all day long, while several thousand people poured into the festival on the campus of Monroe Community College.
I am in AWE of the volunteers from the Rochester Area Children’s Writers & Illustrators who put this festival together. I’ve never seen so many kids, clutching so many shiny, new, autographed books, looking so excited. Saturday’s festival was a high-energy, joyful celebration of reading, and I was thrilled to be a part of it. I sold out the bookstore’s 50 copies of SPITFIRE and was especially happy to hear that some of those copies are on their way to classrooms & libraries. I met lots of great readers, too!
My family and I came home with a huge pile of books signed by some of our favorite authors as well.
You can’t see her smiling face here, but this is Vivian Vande Velde, my festival table-next-door-neighbor… and this was the view I had of her most of the day! She signed about a zillion books for excited readers– every one with a huge smile.
Here’s Vivian’s smile! She’s on the left, with fellow festival organizer Kathleen Blasi on the right. My E loves American Girl books and other historical fiction, so she was thrilled to have a signed copy of Kathy’s book A Name of Honor. (She’ll get to read it as soon as I’m done!)
Tedd Arnold was busy signing his zany picture books here, but he signed a copy of his new YA called Rat Life for J. If you read the review I posted of Rat Life last week, you know how much I loved it. It’s a great, great book, and I was excited to meet Tedd and tell him how much I enjoyed it.
I was also excited to meet Coleen Murtagh Paratore, since I love the voice in her writing (and because
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told me I had to go see her. Coleen says hi, Debbie!)
James Howe had a loooonnng line of people waiting for him to sign when he came back from his presentation. Here he is, getting started.
Here’s Kathy Blasi (left) with Rebecca Stead (right) , author of First Light, which I’ve heard such good things about and have been dying to read. Now I have a signed copy waiting for me on the bookshelf.
Michelle Knudsen signed so many copies of Library Lion that they were gone by the time I made it over to take her picture. This was the only photo I got of Michelle, so I decided to share it, even though her eyes are kind of closed, because she looks so cute anyway. When my eyes are closed in a photo, I just look sleepy.
I met fellow North Country Books writer Sally Valentine for the first time on Saturday, too. Her book, The Ghost of the Charlotte Lighthouse, was a popular choice, since it’s set near Rochester, NY.
Carol Johmann was still smiling after doing double-duty at the Children’s Book Festival — as both an author and the festival organizer. Carol is an AMAZING woman whose organizational skills astound me. Thanks, Carol, for EVERYTHING you did to make the festival so fantastic.
Here’s another amazing lady from behind the scenes of the festival… Annie Crane from the Lift Bridge Book Shop in Brockport. Annie and her staff handled sales at the event and worked tirelessly all day long to make sure everyone had what they needed. Thanks, Annie!
This was such an incredible festival, with so many fun, amazing moments, but there’s one in particular that I have to share…
One ten-year-old boy kept coming back to my table. I had given him a bookmark and a Spitfire temporary tattoo. He had tasted the hardtack that I offer up as samples to show kids what life was like on the gunboats during the American Revolution. We had chatted about the real 12-year-old boy who’s one of Spitfire‘s narrators and what it must have been like for him to be in a battle when he was so young.
Finally, the boy came back with his mom and siblings, each of whom carried a single book. (His sister had Coleen’s The Wedding Planner’s Daughter and was holding it so tightly that you would have needed a crowbar to get it away from her.)
“Do you see why I’m having trouble choosing?” he said, looking up at his mom. And then I understood why he kept leaving and coming back. In a room with more than fifty authors and hundreds of books, he could choose one.
“I sure do,” she told him. “But pick the one you think you’ll enjoy the most.”
He nodded. “I want this one,” he said, and handed me a copy of Spitfire to sign. I barely made it through the signature and my thank you to him before the tears came. He came back one more time a few minutes later, so his aunt could take his picture with me.
No matter how many books follow Spitfire, I think that’s the moment I’ll to remember the most when I think about why I write for kids.
I loved James Howe’s novel THE MISFITS, where a group of middle school outsiders challenges the school’s name-calling habit as a student council campaign platform. Until last week, though, I hadn’t gotten around to reading the sequel, TOTALLY JOE. This is a lighter look at what it’s like to be a gay kid in middle school. Howe introduces readers to Joe Bunch through his main character’s “alphabiography,” a series of essays he has to write about his life, with each topic starting with a different letter of the alphabet (26 chapters, including one on the ubiquitous alphabet-book xylophone, for those keeping track). Through the assignment, Joe tells the story of his first sort-of boyfriend, middle school bullies, his creative, supportive Aunt Pam, and his quest to be Totally Joe. It’s honest and tough sometimes without losing its fun voice. Howe has provided a particular gift in this novel – a book about being gay that’s age-appropriate for someone who’s still in middle school and not ready for some of the edgier titles that seem to abound in YA literature.
I also want to talk about RAT LIFE, Tedd Arnold’s first foray into young adult literature, which was so great that when I finished it, I trotted right over to nominate it for a Cybil Award in the YA Category. (Nominations are open until November 21st, in case you haven’t nominated your favorites yet!)