national book festival

Library of Congress launches an interactive resource that shows how to host your own book festival. The new Young Readers' Online Toolkit will help students, educators and parents bring the magic of the National Book Festival to their classrooms, libraries and homes.

Washington, D.C. (PRWEB) September 26, 2007 -- In addition to planning a range of activities for this year's National Book Festival on the National Mall on September 29, 2007, the Library just launched the National Book Festival Young Readers' Online Toolkit to bring the festival into libraries, schools and homes across the country.



The Toolkit features information about National Book Festival authors who write for children and teens, podcasts of their readings, exclusive Q&A about their inspiration and writing process, teaching tools and activities for kids. This interactive resource also shows educators, parents and children how they can host their own book festivals.

The new Online Toolkit will help students, educators and parents bring the magic of the National Book Festival to their classrooms, libraries and homes to make the National Book Festival a truly national experience. The Hosting Guide provides an overview of the toolkit and shows how to use its resources to host local reading celebrations. Students can work with their parents, teachers and librarians and follow these easy steps to organize book festivals in their classrooms, libraries and homes.

You can find out more about authors by visiting 2007 National Book Festival Poster in your home, school, local library and community.

Also, check out additional podcasts with the following participating authors who shared their latest work and discoveries: Terry Pratchett, Maria Celeste Arrarás, Charles Simic, Rosemary Wells, Victoria Rowel, Patricia MacLachlan, Megan McDonald, and Holly Black.
2007 National Book Festival

The free Festival will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 29, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., between 7th and 14th streets (rain or shine). For the full list of participating authors, illustrators and poets, their books, and other activities at this year's National Book Festival, please vis
Books," wrote the poet Philip Larkin, "are a load of crap." No doubt Larkin, one of the most gifted lyric poets of the 20th century and a career librarian at the University of Hull, was being ironic. But irony or no, the participants and sponsors of this Saturday's National Book Festival vehemently disagree.

Held every year for the last six years on the National Mall -- rain or shine -- the festival brings together marquee-name authors of all stripes and genres and readers and bookish types from around the area -- some 100,000 people if the number of attendees from last year is any indication.

And since D.C. is a haven for bookish, intellectual types and writers of all kinds, it stands to reason that alongside those marquee names will be a few locally based writers. This year's festival lineup doesn't disappoint.

Fiction writers include the ever-prolific Joyce Carol Oates, who will probably have started and finished another novel during her time at the festival. Then there's Jodi Picoult, who was the first woman to write for the D.C. Comics "Wonder Woman" series and whose popular Oprah-touted novels have essentially made her a cottage industry in publishing. Joining them is locally based novelist Thomas Mallon, author of Dewey Defeats Truman, Henry and Clara, and his latest, Fellow Travelers. Then there's Edward P. Jones. If you don't know Jones' story, it's worth repeating: a writer with only one published collection of short stories under his belt, Jones had saved up five weeks vacation at his day job here in the D.C. area. He decided to use it writing a novel he'd been thinking about. The result? The Known World, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and catapulted him to literary stardom.

Those with a historical bent will want to visit the History & Biography pavilion to check out Arnold Rampersad. He'll be discussing his recently published biography of iconic African-American writer Ralph Ellison, in which he paints a not altogether pretty picture of the perpetually blocked writer. Locally based historians and biographers include James Swanson, who will be discussing his book detailing the 12-day manhunt for John Wilkes Booth following the Lincoln assassination; noted political historian Elizabeth Drew, and Joan Crawford Greenburg, a lawyer and Supreme Court reporter and author of a book on, yep, the Supreme Court.

The foodies, home decorators and family-oriented among you will want to stop by the Home & Family pavilion to visit with Ann Amernick, author of The Art of the Dessert as well as executive pastry chef and part-owner of Palena (by the way, I know she's a pastry chef, but if she happens to divulge the secret behind Palena's terrific cheeseburgers, by all means email me). Other D.C.-based writers include cookbook author Joan Nathan, who brings her expertise in Jewish cuisine to the festival, and ABC News Chief White House correspondent Martha Raddatz, whose account of her coverage of the Iraq war, A Long Road Home, was published to glowing reviews. And remember to say "thank you" when taking your signed copy of Judith Martin's latest book -- she is, after all, Miss Manners, and she lives here.

Into whodunnits? Local writers basically own the Mystery & Thriller pavilion, where Washington Post columnists Stephen Hunter and David