{"id":21125,"date":"2017-04-18T07:00:28","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T11:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=21125"},"modified":"2017-04-18T07:00:28","modified_gmt":"2017-04-18T11:00:28","slug":"the-kwame-factor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=21125","title":{"rendered":"The Kwame Factor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"

Photo courtesy of\u00a0Stephanie Gorin.<\/p><\/div>
\nThe three best moments in a children’s bookseller’s life (at least for this bookseller) are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Seeing a child light up with love for a book (often involves book hugging);<\/li>\n
  2. Seeing a child who used to think of\u00a0himself or herself as a “non-reader” fall in love with\u00a0books, usually triggered by one special gateway title\u00a0or author;<\/li>\n
  3. Seeing an auditorium full of kids shout and cheer with joy about books, reading, authors, and their own possibilities.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I got to experience all three of those things the other day when Kwame Alexander and his guitarist accompanist, Randy Preston, took the stage at Burlington High School, performing for around 600 kids from 11 area elementary and middle schools.
    \n
    \nWhen Karen Walsh at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt asked us last fall if we’d like to be a stop on Kwame Alexander’s tour, it took us about .04 seconds to say YES, PLEASE! But our usual offsite space\u00a0fits only around\u00a0225\u2013250 people, and there are so many schools and kids in our region who rarely get a chance for an author event, so I started thinking on a larger scale: find the biggest venue I could, and fill it with students from as many area elementary and middle schools as possible.
    \nWe\u00a0knew Kwame would be a big draw. As a Newbery Award winner, he has the substantial\u00a0literary credibility needed to convince principals to spring for transportation to the venue and to allow teachers the time needed for all the required planning and permissions\u00a0for their students. As a presenter, his reputation as a big crowd-pleaser is undisputed. And as an African-American author, his very presence for Vermont audiences is especially welcome and needed,\u00a0for white students and students of color alike. It\u00a0was a winning proposition in every way.
    \n

    \"\"

    Yes, this pig has wings! And high-fived all 600 kids on their way out of the buses. That’s got to be one sore plush mitt…. Photo courtesy of Eva Gordon & Cally Flickinger<\/p><\/div>
    \nThis was a massive event to plan, made even more so by the fact that\u00a0Kwame’s scheduled visit for March 14 was canceled two days beforehand because of a huge blizzard hitting New England, so we had to start the whole procedure all over again. We sadly lost three schools in the reschedule, but gained two that weren’t able to make\u00a0the first date. I won’t bore you with all the details, but if you already know the level of coordination required to plan even\u00a0one author event with\u00a0book orders for a single\u00a0school, you can multiply that by 11 schools, add in arrival, departure, and traffic control measures, and begin to understand what this entailed. (Sales reps who wondered where I disappeared this season, it was into the ever-changing landscape of March-April event planning.)
    \nWe were so lucky that Burlington High School’s principal Tracy Racicot was immediately supportive of the idea; she generously opened the\u00a0high school’s theatre to the event. Their librarian\u00a0had advocated for us and provided\u00a0a schematic of the seating so that once all of the schools confirmed,\"\" I could figure out where each school would\u00a0fit. My event co-conspirator at the Flying Pig, Emily, was a huge help throughout the process, and we had great volunteers on the day. The morning of April 14 was the culmination of months of planning, and it was as wonderful as we could have hoped.
    \nWe thanked the high school for hosting us, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for sponsoring\u00a0the visit, and all of the kids, teachers, and librarians who made a special effort to leave their schools at such a busy time of year. The special guest we’d invited to introduce Kwame, professor and community organizer, Patrick Brown\u2014who also created and continues to arrange the Martin Luther King Remembrance Day events in Burlington each year\u2014gave a lovely introduction\u00a0that kept\u00a0the\u00a0crowd of 600 kids utterly\u00a0attentive\u00a0with respect and admiration. Then Kwame Alexander and his guitarist friend, Randy Preston, hit the ground running with laughter and liveliness, igniting the auditorium with fun. The children were over the moon with joy and excitement throughout the presentation.
    \n

    \"\"

    Lucky kids get a chance to win t-shirts and glory in a contest.<\/p><\/div>
    \nThere was an audience participation contest portion of the event, which was hilarious. There was inspiration, book and writing and language love, and off-the-cuff jokery. Randy not only had perfect timing with his\u00a0musical punctuation, but a spectacular singing voice. Kwame had the kids totally jazzed up.
    \n\"\"
    \nTo give you a little taste of the presentation (video by WPTZ’s Stephanie Gorin):
    \n