A Tween's Review of the 2009 National Book Festival

A tween’s review of the 2009 National Book Festival:
It rained, and it poured, but that didn’t deter the crowds: more than 130,000 people attended the 2009 National Book Festival according to the Library of Congress (LOC). The Mall was soggy, but 4th grader Madison Jones from Holy Trinity School braved the elements to get a glimpse of one her favorite authors, Holly Black, author of The Spiderwick Chronicles. Says Madison, “It was really fun, and I was really excited for it because of Holly Black. There were lots of choices [of authors to see], but you had to be willing to stand in line for over an hour sometimes.” Sadly, after standing in line Madison and family did not get to meet Ms. Black at the book signing because the authors were called away for a press conference.

A great summary of the day’s events focused on children’s, teens, and tween literature was published by “Letters From Rapunzel” author, Sara Lewis Holmes on her blog.

The LOC has gone high-tech! The LOC tweeted live from the event all day; you can look up the journal of the day’s tweets by searching for the hashtag: #nbf, and their Young People’s Literature Ambassador, Jon Scieszka, announced the launch of The Exquisite Corpse project. It’s not as scary as it sounds - here’s how their website describes it: “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. Our 'Exquisite Corpse Adventure works this way: Jon Scieszka . . . has written the first episode, which is ‘pieced together out of so many parts that it is not possible to describe them all here.’ He has passed it on to a cast of celebrated writers and illustrators, who must eventually bring the story to an end. Every two weeks, there will be a new episode and a new illustration. The story will conclude a year from now. This story starts with a train rushing through the night....’No one knows where or how it will end!’” You can read the chapters online as the story unfolds every other week at http://read.gov/exquisite-corpse/episode1.html.

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