First Virginia Children’s Book Festival a Success

The inaugural “Virginia Children’s Book Festival” was held at Longwood University on October 10-11, 2014 and featured a variety of workshops with several New York Times Bestselling Authors and Illustrators.

The festival included special programs by the American Shakespeare Center, Edgar Allan Poe Museum, Creative Minds Publications and Toogy Tales.  Authors included Judy Blume (via Skype) with Lawrence Blume (in person), Todd Parr, Mac Barnett, Meg Medina, John Bemelmans Marciano, Leonard Marcus, Ben Saenz, Kathryn Erskine, Timothy Basil Ering, Steve Watkins, Teri Kanefield, Gigi Amateau, Kat Spears and Lamar Giles.  “We feel it was a tremendous success, rain and all. Several of our authors, including Todd Parr, Timothy Basil Ering and John Bemelmans Marciano, requested to return next year and we will gladly have them. Todd Parr has already planned a fundraiser for us and author Teri Kanefield has asked to become an emissary for us and help start a fund to offer gas stipends to rural schools so they can bring classes to the VCBF on field trips. They were overwhelmed by the smoothness of the event, especially for the first year, and were taken by Longwood, the town of Farmville, our volunteers, the Moton Museum and The Fishin’ Pig! They had nothing but praise for the VCBF and are behind our mission to improve literacy, education and a love of reading in the Commonwealth, especially in rural areas” commented Juanita M. Giles, Executive Director of the Virginia Children’s Book Festival.

Although the festival placed a strong emphasis on providing workshops for children, there were also a variety of sessions that appealed to young adults and academic/adults as well such as “Creating a Reading Home,” “Writing for Children Hands-on Workshop,” and “Teaching with Trade Books.”  The book festival ran from 9:30 a.m. on Friday until around 9:30 p.m.  On Saturday, the excitement began at 9:30 a.m. and lasted until about 3:30 p.m. “Our LCVA programs were incredibly popular and well-attended, as was our Civil Rights in Children’s Literature panel at the Moton Museum. We had standing-room only at several of our events on Saturday, despite the rain, and Chop Suey, our official bookseller, had a take four times larger than what they sold at a festival in its eleventh year in Richmond. We are already organizing next year’s festival and are very excited. We have a lot more people on board who want to help,” said Giles.