2015 Kaigler Children's Book Festival!

We are only a few hours away from Day 1 of the Kaigler Children's Book Festival being held at University of Southern Mississippi. Last year was my first time attending the Festival and I couldn't wait to get back in 2015. In attendance each year are award winning authors and illustrators sharing their enthusiasm for creating children's books. Add in the teachers, librarians, school librarians, university students and professors, archivists and scholars and you have a Comic-Con for folks who are crazy for children's books! 

 Here is a pic from the Book Festival FB page. They are stuffing bags in preparation for tomorrow!

I'll present "The Power of Picture Book Biographies" at 4:15 p.m. on Wednesday. After hearing Leda Schubert speak last year about her book Monsieur Marceau, I became fascinated by picture book biographies or PBBs. I read 50+ children's picture books to prepare for the presentation and there are some excellent titles to share. Among the best are books by the author/illustrator team of Jen Bryant and Melissa Sweet. This award winning duo created The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus that I will share with participants tomorrow. (Teaser: The word "thesaurus" means "treasure house" in Greek. How cool is that?) Click here to view the book trailer for The Right Word.

A few of the titles to be shared at "The Power of Picture Book Biographies" session.

I'm very excited about meeting the authors and illustrators who will be here at the festival. Tomorrow I plan to track down Chris Barton and Don Tate, author and illustrator of the new book, The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch, a PBB about a Mississippi slave who became a member of Congress.

Well, better get some sleep. It's going to be a long, exciting day!