{"id":25743,"date":"2018-05-25T09:00:09","date_gmt":"2018-05-25T13:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=25743"},"modified":"2018-05-25T09:00:09","modified_gmt":"2018-05-25T13:00:09","slug":"creating-a-new-austin-tradition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=25743","title":{"rendered":"Creating a New Austin Tradition"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Kate DiCamillo wows the crowd.<\/p><\/div>
\nLast Saturday marked the launch of Austin\u2019s first annual summer reading kick-off festival, put on in partnership between BookPeople, the Austin Independent School District and the Austin Public Library, and it was a blast!\u00a0Kicked off by the incomparable Kate DiCamillo, the day was marked\u00a0by a spirit of creativity and interaction. Setting the tone with a keynote followed by a generous Q&A session, Kate answered questions that ran the gamut\u2014from how her mom’s beloved vacuum inspired a key moment in\u00a0Flora & Ulysses<\/em>, to why her books so often deal with loss and sorrow, to what she recommends for a third grade class to read together as their first book next year (Charlotte\u2019s Web<\/em>, of course). No one gets a crowd buzzing quite like Kate, and from there everyone went forth to explore the rest of the festival and connect with some\u00a0favorite\u00a0authors, old and new.
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Kids browse the festival store.<\/p><\/div>
\nIn her recent post about hosting the Elephant & Piggie Thank-O-Rama tour<\/a>, my colleague Elizabeth Bluemle talked about the intricacy of planning a full day event, and it\u2019s not a small undertaking, to be sure. But watching a real live, bustling event emerge from the hopeful abstraction of tracking sheets, press releases, scheduling grids, room schematics, moderator guidelines, and hundreds of emails can be a magical, magical thing.
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Anna Meriano, Diana L\u00f3pez, Pablo Cartaya and Tracey Baptiste talk family dynamics.<\/p><\/div>
\nThe truth is that events like these can\u2019t be fully planned. They must be carefully prepared for of course. But the primary job of planning is to set up everything we imagine might be needed\u00a0so that the show can run without too many logistical surprises. Then we can\u00a0focus instead on all the unpredictable moments that make the experience come alive. Although this year marks my 10th year of large festival planning, I don\u2019t ever feel like there’s an exact formula because each\u00a0event\u00a0creates its own dynamic. Festivals move too fast once they get going and are so different year to year, audience to audience. This is also a new age range for us. We\u2019re 10 years in to figuring out the Texas Teen Book Festival, but customizing\u00a0an experience just for\u00a0younger readers is brand new. Even for this younger age group, panels offer essential anchors for the day\u2014giving kids a glimpse into\u00a0a bunch of different\u00a0stories at once and letting authors show off unexpected talents. I only wish\u00a0I had a video to share of Pablo Cartaya rapping from the stage! But I think the biggest note from this year (other than the fact that groups of younger kids are more strict about their lunch timing than teens) was that breaking up the day with looser interactive sessions allowed kids to let their own personalities shine and let out a little bit of energy at the same time. I think we’re really going to focus on building out that side of our programming for year two!
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