National Book Festival 2009

Living near the nation's capital does have its perks! One of the best is the annual National Book Festival. It is organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress and will be held on Saturday, September 26, 2009, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., between 7th and 14th streets from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The festival is free and open to the public. It is a day-long celebration of reading that features dozens of highly acclaimed and award-winning authors and poets. There will be author presentations, book signings, customed storybook characters, and much much more. The list of authors and poets coming this year is truly impressive. Here are some useful weblinks to the event:

Home page for the 2009 Festival: http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/

This year's participating authors: http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/2009/authors/index.html

Schedule of author presentations: http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/2009/schedulePavilion.html

Schedule of book signings: http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/2009/scheduleSigning.html

It's a great event for kids who get an upclose look at such favorite authors as Jeff Kinney (Diary of a Wimpy Kid books), Kate DiCamillo (Tale of Despereaux, Because of Winn Dixie--which we will read in December), Craig Hatkoff (Owen & Mzee--which we read last year), Lois Lowry (The Giver and much more), Megan McDonald (Judy Moody and others), Jacqueline Woodson (Locomotion and many others), etc. Well, there are just too many great authors to mention them all.

If you get the chance to visit the National Book Festival, please post a comment here and tell us who you say and what you thought of the whole experience. I'm hoping to attend, so maybe I'll see some of you down there!

Satch and Me

Our book selection for March is Satch and Me by Dan Gutman. This book is one of several books in the Baseball Card Adventure series. So if you like this book, there are many more just waiting for you to read! Mr. Gutman is a prolific writer of children's books. Another fun book series written by him is the My Weird School series (Mrs. Yonkers is Bonkers, Mr. Macky is Wacky, etc.). Many of Gutman's books feature a sports theme (The Million Dollar Shot) but he has also written mysteries, biographies, non-fiction, and books for adults. All of his books are fast-paced and fun to read. Dan Gutman is definitely a good author to get to know!

Elaine Lobl Konigsburg, Author Extraordinaire

Personal Information:
E.L. Konisburg was born February 10, 1930, in New York City. She spent her childhood in growing up in the small mill towns of Pennsylvania. Her family was poor but she really wanted to attend college, so she devised a plan to combine part-time jobs, scholarships, and work-study opportunities to pay for school. She attended Carnegie Mellon University where she earned a B.S. in Chemistry. She then married David Konigsburg in 1952 and together they moved to Florida, where she taught science for several years in an all-girls school. Konigsburg left teaching when the first of her three children was born and she became a full time mother. In 1962, the family moved to New York City and, with all her children in school, Konigsburg began her writing career. She says that she read all her work to her children first. If they liked it, she would continue. But if they didn’t find it interesting, she would revise and rewrite. She is now 77 years old and lives on the beach in North Florida. She continues to write and publish.

Books:
Her first two books were published in 1967 and were a phenomenal success. The first, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, was a Newbery Honor Book. Her second book, From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, won the Newbery Medal the same year! Konigsburg is the only author to have two books on the Newbury list in the same year (1968). She also drew the illustrations for these books. Kongisburg won a second Newbery Medal in 1997 for The View From Saturday, 29 years later, the longest span between any two Newberys awarded to one author. She has published more than 20 books for children and 2 books for adults and won numerous other awards. Her most recent book was just published in 2007 and is titled, The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World.