Matt and I recently attended the National Book Festival, an annual event that I am ashamed to have never heard of until this year. This year, the 11th year of the Festival, it spanned two full days at the National Mall in Washington D.C. One good thing to come out of Matt's two-years of traveling between Missouri and D.C. for work is that he is pretty good at navigating D.C., so when I found out about the Festival just a month or so before it was scheduled, he was all for going. So that's what we did.
It was amazing.
We flew in Friday evening, leaving Warrensburg right after my last class finished at 3:00 and arriving in D.C. around 10:00. We stayed at a Best Western about 3 miles from the Mall, so we took the Metro a lot to get around between our hotel, the Mall, and Georgetown, where we had dinner on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, we took the Metro in an hour early, of which I am glad, because I needed that hour to calm down before listening to the first speaker.
As soon as we made it to the top of the steps coming out of the Metro and I saw all the big white tents set up all along the Mall, I was ecstatic. We grabbed a program and I was off, trying to take in everything at once. There was so much free stuff It was a future teacher's dream. I got a big bag from C-SPAN2 and a copy of the official Festival poster (I actually ended up with three of these, because I had already requested one before the festival, also free, and I picked up a third on Sunday. Seriously, there were about 100 stacks with probably 500 or more posters in each one. There were a ton). In the Pavilion of the States tent I got a bunch of bookmarks and magazines, two poem posters from the Pennsylvania booth, and a poster for "The Exquisite Corpse Adventure," a progressive story game played by several of the authors I had come to the festival to see. I saw the Magic School Bus and scouted out all the pavilions and signing areas of the authors I wanted to see. Then, the Festival officially began.
We started by hearing Toni Morrison speak. It was amazing to see such a famous novelist so close and hear her speak. We tried to stand in line to get her to sign a copy of her book, but I couldn't even estimate how many people were in line. Hundreds, definitely. I decided I wanted to see Gregory Maguire speak more than I wanted her signature, so Matt and I left the line. We probably would not have made it to her in the allotted signing time even if we had stayed, I think.
Gregory Maguire was awesome. He read an excerpt from his newest book, the last in the Oz series. He was hilarious, too. Matt generously volunteered to go hold a spot for me in line for the next author, Sarah Dessen, who I wanted to have sign a book for my sister. When Gregory Maguire's lecture ended, I quickly went to get in line for his autograph in my copy of Wicked, as well as a friend's copy. I talked for a while with the couple in front of me (we waited about 45 minutes for his signing to actually start, and by the time it had started there were about 7 more lines of people stacked next to us, all in line for him as well. We were luckily pretty close to the front of Maguire's line). It was so cool to see so many other people who loved books that much. I think that was one of the best parts -- seeing so many readers all packed together on the Mall. Matt and I tried at one point to estimate how many people were there. I am no good at estimating amounts, but the Library of Congress weekly email newsletter I signed up for did the job for me: an estimated 200,000 people attended the event this year. I can't even comprehend that many people and I'm not sure how they estimate that, but let me tell you, there were a lot of people.
Matt got Dessen's signature on my sister's book and then went to hold a place in line for me in to get Katherine Paterson's signature on Bridge to Terabithia. I did not get to see Paterson speak because her lecture was at the same time as Maguire's, but, thankfully, the Library of Congress videotaped all the lectures and has just started uploading them to the Library of Congress website, so I will be able to watch all the ones I missed and share the rest of Maguire's lecture with Matt. Here is the link to the ones that are up so far:
http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/results.php?mode=s&cat=58
After I got Maguire's signature, I met Matt to get Paterson's, and then we took a break after all the rushing around. We stopped at the Family Storytelling Stage where we got to see actress Julianne Moore (who has written 3 children's books based on her childhood nickname) read one of her books to the kids. That evening we ate at Clyde's in Georgetown, which was delicious, and had Ben and Jerry's for dessert.
Sunday we were lucky to have a later start and time to sleep in after a long day of walking on Saturday.
This day the festival officially opened at 1:00, so we had decided to leave the hotel around 10:30, stop by Chipotle for lunch and walk the three miles to the Mall. We stopped near the Iwo Jima memorial to eat our lunch. It really wasn't too bad of a walk, except that I was very excited and didn't want to be late, so I wanted to go fast and it was pretty warm out. I should have brought shorts, for sure. But we got there with time to spare. We got front front row seats very close to the center to see Susan Cooper, the author I was most excited to see speak. I'm waiting for her webcast to appear online to see if we might have made it into the video!
She was great! I can't describe it -- she was funny and it was so awesome to hear her stories and her thoughts on the inspiration for her books. Matt said he wants to read them now, which made my entire weekend, hearing him say he wanted to read a series of books I absolutely adore just because he heard the author speak about them (the series I am referring to is the Dark is Rising series). After we saw Susan Cooper, I got in line for Sherman Alexi to sign my copy of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Matt held my place in Susan Cooper's line. Again, I am excited to watch Alexi's lecture online since I missed it that day. I was within the first 30 people of his line, so I quickly met up with Matt. We were close to the beginning of Susan Cooper's line, too, and she was still doing personalized messages in books when we got close to the front. I wrote Matt's name and mine on a sheet of paper for her to sign the book for us, and then we were there. I won't pretend I got to really talk to Susan Cooper or anything, which would have been the most awesome thing ever, but she did sign our book "with all good wishes." So cool!
We milled around a bit more after this, saw some PBS characters (I took a picture with Martha the Dog from Martha Speaks) and then headed out from the Book Festival. This night we ate at Founding Farmers, a really organic but sort of fancy restaurant. Matt had mac and cheese with lobster bits on top. I had the thickest and best tomato soup ever and a grilled cheese sandwich with about 5 kinds of cheese, and a raspberry cucumber cooler (that's non-alcoholic, it is basically like water flavored with raspberry and cucumber ... it was actually pretty great).
Monday, I flew home by myself (Matt had to stay the week for work) and drove to Warrensburg for class (thank you classes that don't start until noon on Monday this semester), with my one bookback of weekend trip items back to bursting with three new books (one of which being the complete Dark is Rising, which was too cool to pass up even though I already owned all the books), a ton of free bookmarks and magazines, and 5 posters all rolled up in a newspaper that I counted as my personal item. Packing extraordinaire, yes I am.
It was an awesome trip, full and fun. We WILL be making it an annual trip! Especially if there are more of my favorite authors next year ... I can't wait to watch all the lectures I missed and look through all my cool free stuff. It's been a couple weeks, but I still haven't had time to go through everything. I'm so glad I got to go with Matt. Planning everything out, navigating together, and getting to see and do all the things I wanted to was superb.
http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/
