Book Festival Offers Unique Opportunity
to Meet Local Authors, Illustrators

By Karin Gaffney

There’s something special about meeting the author or illustrator who created a book you love. The thrill is the same for both kids and adults.

On Saturday, November 5, 2005, people from all over western New York are invited to do just that – get up close and personal with local children's authors and illustrators at the 9th annual Rochester Children’s Book Festival. The unique event is presented by the Rochester Area Children's Writers and Illustrators organization in partnership with Monroe Community College.

The free event offers the opportunity for families to meet nationally known, award-winning children’s authors and illustrators from upstate New York. They also can attend author presentations, take part in illustrator workshops, play word games, listen to stories and get books signed.

The festival has something for all age levels:

Kids – and all those young at heart – can cozy up in the two Read-to-Me Corners for continuous picture book readings by Robin Pulver (photo below, Axle Annie and the Speed Grump, Author Day for Room 3T), Cat Bowman Smith (Auction!), Will Hubbell (photo left, Snow Day DanceA Really Good Snowman), Stu Smith (My School’s a Zoo!), Michelle Knudsen (Carl the Complainer), among others. Members of the Blackstorytelling League of Rochester also will tell African folktales and legends. One corner will emphasize readings for the kindergarten and pre-K set, the other for older children.

At One Busy Bookworm Place, children from 2 to12 and their parents can make craft items, play with puppets and illustrate action scenes. At scheduled times, authors and illustrators will guide children through activities like creating complex dot-to-dot puzzles, turning simple shapes into characters, and using different parts of their brains to describe settings.

The 12-and-up crowd is invited to a special afternoon program called “Just for Teens,” featuring talks by young adult writers Vivian Vande Velde (photo right, Now You See It…, Witch Dreams), Chris Crutcher (The Sledding Hill, Whale Talk), and Mary Beth Miller (Aimee), and a Question & Answer period with Laurie Halse Anderson (Prom, Speak) and Linda Sue Park (Project Mulberry, A Single Shard). Adult fans are welcome, but teens will be seated first. The program will run from 1 to 3:15 p.m.

This type of literary event for families significantly benefits the community, says Festival Director Carol A. Johmann, president of RACWI and herself a nonfiction author.

Almost a third of the population of the Greater Rochester area is 21 and under, she says. Nearly a quarter of the population is enrolled in pre-K through 12th grade. "The Rochester Children’s Book Festival seeks to serve these kids and their families by giving them the opportunity to meet authors and illustrators who write and create just for them. The wide range of genres the participating authors represent and the festival programs show that reading is fun, that books can open their eyes to fantastical worlds, mysterious events and laugh-out-loud situations."

Monroe County has a higher percentage of people with college and graduate degrees than New York state and the U.S. at large, Johmann says. Its median household income is slightly higher than the state and national averages. Still, as with most areas with a single city surrounded by affluent suburbs, Monroe County is also an area of huge discrepancies in income, education and literacy.

"That’s why this year the festival is joining forces with the Rochester City School District to bring authors into five city schools. This Festival to Go program was introduced in 2004 and is supported by Altrusa International of Rochester, a service group of professional women who will again donate books by the visiting authors and illustrators to the schools' libraries."

The wide range of talent, and the sheer large number of local authors, makes the event something families who love books will not want to miss.

"The Rochester area has a wealth of published authors for every age group, but especially for children and young adults," Johmann, whose photo appears to the right, says. "There’s also a slew of children’s authors and illustrators from the area who are actively submitting work to publishers, looking for that first contract. RACWI currently has about 70 members who fit that description – published or seeking to be published. Other cities of comparable size and even larger, in contrast, have much smaller writing groups. So I’d say Rochester is rather uniquely qualified to host a children’s book festival!"

The 9th annual Rochester Children’s Book Festival runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 5, at MCC Brighton Campus, 1000 E. Henrietta Road. For more information about the event, log on to www.rochesterchildrensbookfestival.org. For a KidsOutAndAbout.com list of Rochester-area authors (many of whom are participating in the festival), with photos and descriptions of their work, click here.

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Karin Gaffney is a children’s writer who lives in Rochester, NY.. Her work has been published in magazines such as Grit and Guideposts for Kids. Her children's book column is meant to provide reading ideas for kids, with suggestions by local public and school librarians.

To contact Karin, email her at karinwrites@hotmail.com.

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