I’ve just come back from the fabulous Rochester Children’s Book Festival, about which I have written before (here) as the gold standard of children’s author festivals. This year, more than 3,000 people attended this indoor celebration of books. There was not a moment when people were not filling the aisles, browsing our tables, participating in presentations, making crafts, and listening to read-alouds. The RCBF is a blast! As always, it ran like clockwork thanks to the amazing team of Elizabeth Falk, Kathy Blasi, Barbara Underhill and her team of volunteers, the brilliant Vivian Vande Velde who dreamed up the festival in the first place, and so many others who make it happen. Lift Bridge Books creates a pop-up store in the festival space and brings all of the 50 visiting authors’ books — no easy feat, I can tell you. And during the two weeks before the Festival, the “Festival-To-Go” brings authors into inner-city schools in Rochester for free, allowing hundreds, maybe thousands, of children unusual access to “real live authors and illustrators,” all talented, dedicated people passionate about books, reading, writing, and kids.
In addition to the glow of seeing SO MANY enthralled, excited children at the festival — from the three-year-old rapt over a copy of Library Lion to the 10-year-olds excitedly clutching signed copies of new books from favorite authors — there is the great joy of spending a little time with author and artist pals I might only see once or twice a year. The hilarity is pretty much non-stop, and lasts from dinner the night before the festival to drinks after the dinner the night it closes. And Readers, sometimes this means we are privy to the secrets of Great Writing.
Authors Paul Acampora and Erin Dionne let me into their private writing worlds, and are allowing me to share this video snippet with you. It came about because Paul was telling us about how his daughter refers to his writing room as a “thinking room,” because all her dad does is stare out the window. He demonstrated. And Erin responded by sharing her own, um, memorable writing style. And then they allowed their process to be recorded, poorly, by a mediocre phone camera in a crowded restaurant. So aspiring writers, take note: as Erin Dionne says, This is how the sausage gets made. (Don’t worry about the sound; it’s probably best left off.)