National Book Festival

Yesterday I had a blast at the National Book Festival held on the National Mall (I'm still trying to figure out why it's called "the Mall"). Stephen had an all-day seminar on the MBTI personality test so I decided to take advantage of the free time downtown.





What would a book festival be without your favorite PBS characters? Clifford and Arthur were the only ones I recognized though. I guess it's been a while. At first I felt ridiculous getting a picture with Clifford, but then I saw much crazier librarians and teachers during the day and I felt mild compared to them.




Just a glimpse of what it was like. The big white tents were either full of authors or free stuff.





One of the tents had a booth for each of the 50 states. I got an Idaho potato pin from Idaho, a pen from Maryland, a container of sea salt from Utah, several "Reading Deputy" pins from Texas, a state park guide from Georgia, and a bilingual English-Somali children's book from Minnesota. I also got several bookmarks, booklists, and various literacy tools at each of the booths. Guess who was at the Utah booth? Shannon Hale!




And here is a fuzzy picture of me with Shannon Hale. I read a few of her books (Goose Girl, Book of a Thousand Days, and Princess Academy) this summer and LOVED them. I got to hear her at a presentation earlier in the day and she was hilarious! Some of the authors I didn't get a chance to see were: John Grisham, Nicholas Sparks, Judy Blume, Rick Riordan, and David Shannon.

It was a pretty dark and rainy day, but I still had a terrific time!

One of the highlights of the day was listening to Lois Lowry, author of The Giver and Number the Stars. They are both Newberry Medal winners and two of my favorite books. She talked about an experience she had when she was 8 that helped her decide she wanted to be an author (although she didn't publish until she was 40). She mostly talked about her newest book, which is also her first picture book. It's called Crow Call and it's true story about a day she spent with her father after he returned from World War II. There's really something special about listening to an author read her own book. She only read half, so I can't speak for the entire book but it seems like a great book, and one that could be helpful for kids today who are adjusting to a returning military parent.

After a few hours at the festival I took a trip to the National Gallery of Art. I am not a real big appreciater of art, but I enjoyed the impressionism section and the section of paintings by American artists.

If anything, the building was really beautiful, inside and out.

Just another picture of DC. That's the capitol building way in the back.

And a segway tour!

One of the coolest presentations was a reading of the first episode of "The Exquisite Corpse Adventure." But don't worry... "It's not what you might think. An Exquisite Corpse is an 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." So basically several awesome children's authors are each writing an installment of the book, which was started by Jon Scieszka (The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, The Stinky Cheese Man). Every two weeks there's a new episode, each written by a different author and posted on read.gov. Some of the authors include: Kate DiCamillo (Tale of Despereaux, Because of Winn-Dixie), Shannon Hale, Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) Megan McDonald (Judy Moody series), and Katherine Paterson (Bridge to Terabithia). Anyway, the first episode was hilarious and I am excited to read the rest.

I have to recommend one more author I learned about: Craig Hatkoff. I'd never heard of him, but I was impressed with his presentation about the children's books he co-writes with his daughters. They are all about animals, which kids love, and each is meant to convey a message to help kids deal with the tough things in life.

Can you tell I love books? What a great day.