Be You!: 2020 National Book Festival

[Music] so [Music] uh oh hi guys i'm john cesca i am the guy who wrote the three little pigs the true story the stinky cheese man and you might know me as the first national ambassador of young people's literature which was kind of great that's why i love the library of congress they gave me a medal and gave me this great position where i get to tell kids all about all these different kinds of books and now we have all kinds of ambassadors we're up to number eight and jason reynolds but i was the first and i've still got my medal to prove it which i kind of love to wear all the time just to you know just to let people know if they get confused like who's this guy uh i'm the ambassador yeah yeah see we can get real close all right i don't want to mess with jason i just put that away i'm here today to introduce you to the amazing kids book authors that we have at the 20th library of congress national book festival the virtual edition where you get to come and hang out in my library which is very convenient because i have all the books i want to show you i've got like just a bazillion of them and i'll be introducing all these authors who i would just love for you to check out because that's kind of the great thing about this festival um you get to hear from so many different writers and that's the beauty of what reading is i mean reading is important reading's a great thing but reading's also fun and it should be you should go pick what you like to read if you like to read information books we've got information books if you love graphic novels plenty of graphic novels so i hope you use this to just like find something you like so without further ado please join me in hearing from all of these spectacular authors that we have and i hope you find something you'd like to read [Music] okay here's one of my favorite authors ever she's actually a neighbor not too far from where i live up here in the catskills now sophie blackhaul she does the most amazing books and she is the most amazing person and she's kind of put all of that together in her latest book uh wondering like what would happen if a kid was writing a letter to an alien and explaining all the things you would need if you came to earth and that's what the kid does and it's just kind of both sweet and funny and explains how we really need to connect with everybody on earth and take care of earth and that's a heck of a great message so sophie tell us more about it [Music] hello i'm sophie blackhole i'm thrilled to be here with you as part of the national book festival i'm the illustrator of binding winning and of the ivy and bean series and i'm the author and illustrator of hello lighthouse i'm excited to tell you about my new book which is called if you come to earth but first i'm going to warm up with a little painting for me drawing is the thing i do when i'm trying to really look at something and see it clearly when i want to notice what it is and how it works and why it exists and painting is the thing i do when i'm trying to figure out how something feels drawing is slow and painstaking and filled with doubt and lots of sighing and lip biting but i paint with my heart in my mouth because honestly i have no idea how it's going to turn out it's all about physics and chemistry how the paint moves in water and how long it takes to dry in the air and how the pigment reacts with the paper i use schmincke watercolors because my father gave me a set of 24 pans when i was 15 and i painted at least 30 books with that set and now that i'm a grown up i bought a big fancy set with 48 colors but i stuck with schmincke because i'm sentimental i'm painting a comet in the sky because that's the moment in my book when everything comes together when we realize that you and i and everyone we know and everyone we've never met share this one planet this one home if you come to earth it's a story about a kid writing a letter to a visitor from outer space explaining the world if you come to earth here's what you need to know i wrote the first draft seven years ago and it's taken that long to make it a book when i was working with unicef meeting children around the world i promised i would try to make a book about all of us and the planet we share there are still lots of things we don't know we don't know where we were before we were born or where we go when we die but right this minute we are here together on this beautiful earth and another thing i know is this more than ever we need books especially books for children and books that connect us if you come to earth is a book about a kid writing a letter to a visitor from outer space explaining the world if you come to earth here's what you need to know where our planet sits in the solar system the fact that it's made of land and water mountains and plains cities and towns that the people who live here come in all shapes and sizes and that we love each other that we get cold and hungry that we're always learning always busy and that we are not alone that we share the planet with creatures in the sea and animals on the land and birds in the sky that we make music and art and mistakes that we tell stories in many languages many years ago i drew a poster for the new york city subway i've been taking the subway for 20 years since i moved here from australia and i always look around at my fellow passengers and think how we each have our own different thoughts and experiences and stories to tell but that right this minute we are all traveling in the same direction i hope anyone reading if you come to earth might find something in the book just for them and that alongside the small things they find familiar that they will also be reminded that the world is wide and diverse and wonderful and that it belongs to all of us it's the only home we have so we should take care of it and each other wow see i told you that's just the kind of book you want to read right well here's another one uh this is by a guy i know i've run into him a million times when we're out reading books to kids and his name is peter reynolds peter h reynolds to you um but peter's got all kinds of fun books and he and they're really kind of inspirational and they kind of just uplifting things to read and i especially love this latest one because it's kind of what i love to do be you in fact i'm going to use this from now on i'm just going to tell people hey i got to be me well let peter explain to you like how that works [Music] hi i am peter reynolds and i am here in my studio where i do my thinking my writing my drawing and it's in denim massachusetts which is not too far from boston massachusetts where i have been living most of my life i was born in canada but i made my home here in massachusetts and i am really uh thrilled to be able to connect the dots with all of you out there and share news about my latest book um which is called which is called bu and this is what i like to call the handbook for amazing amazing human beings um it explores this idea of being a human being and i was thinking to myself why are we called beings right we say humans right but we also say human beings and i thought to myself that that's because we can be right we can be so many things uh we can be uh we can be amazing and that's what i'm hoping this book inspires my young readers and also really what no matter what age you are in fact i wrote this book for all ages and all of us are works in progress so this book celebrates uh our possibility and i'm an optimist and i think things are going to get better maybe because i'm a twin i was born a twin i am a twin my twin brother paul is my best friend my big brother by 14 minutes being called identical as you're growing up over and over again and people would stand us next to each other they try to figure out how we were the same and how we were different for me it was the how we are different that was interesting to me because i am a human being all separate from paul and i love paul but i am me and he is he and he's amazing in the garden and i love to draw really quickly and and take ideas from here and put them down that's my passion and i got really fascinated with what people's passions were what what drives you and i thought in school how often do we ask the most important question the most important question which is who are you who are you i'm a huge fan of libraries and by the way happy 220th birthday to the library of congress how cool is that that's an old library i used to hang out in an old library myself the charles adams public library in chelmsford massachusetts and i remember jumping on my bicycle after school and heading down to uh number one to do my homework and of course we'd all be racing for the you know there'd be like four books on uh you know the uh you know fill in the blank topic and uh so you'd have to get to the library first to get those books but when i finished my homework then i was free to roam and i like to say that i was a free-range chicken in the library and i could uh wander anywhere in that library and that was a very formational moment for me that i realized that all of these books in all of these sections were mine and they were mine to explore and there was no teacher saying read this book right it was me discovering those books and there was something about a book cover right your you'd look at a book in and it would literally speak to you you could hear its voice say read me read me this is this this could be important for you of course the only way to find out is to open up that book and start reading which is kind of my philosophy is that the the blank page is a wonderful thing and some of us are less afraid of it and my my goal is to make everybody see that blank page as a swimming pool and um see how refreshing it is to to dive in and to to share right what you're thinking feeling um and uh you know if you're a bit timid you can always start at the shallow end of the pool and then you work your way up to the deep end of the pool and then you can really do some heavy-duty sharing with the world because the world needs you the world needs your voice so don't be shy speak up and be a part of the change all right here's something our next author is five years old i mean she's probably the youngest author we've ever had which might drive some other authors crazy but i think you might have seen her before and i think you might be pretty excited to hear her story because her name is parker curry and she's done this book with her mom it's called parker looks up and it's about the time she and her mom went to the national portrait gallery couple years ago i think when she was two and she saw the picture of michelle obama and she just froze and in that moment it kind of set it all so here's the story behind that check this out [Music] hi my name is paike and my name is jessica and we are the authors of parker look up we are currently in our hometown of washington d.c the book is about when i when i went to the portrait gallery when i was two with my mommy and my sister and what did we see when we were at the national portrait gallery and um i stopped froze look at michelle obama's portrait and my mommy tried to get a picture of me but i just froze there and a stranger took a picture of me looking at the michelle obama the first lady's portrait the thing what inspired me was that girl had a beautiful gown and dark skin like me and i knew i could meet her in person maybe you could meet her in person and you got to right yes for three times yes we wanted to write the book because we wanted to inspire share the story but with other kids and other grown-ups so they can be inspired and they can maybe write a book you said it better than i could have and they can be awesome they can be activists and they can inspire the world good job it was very cool to hang out with michelle obama i think cool may be an understatement um it was surreal it was so magical it was magical to meet michelle obama i was going to say magical it was magical to meet her and enchanting it was enchanting mrs obama is um as a friend of mine a friend of markers but miss obama is as kind and as warm and as humble as you could ever imagine and um it was a wonderful experience to meet her and to see to meet her in person and and see the interaction between hunger and do a dance lady as you can see parker has very fond memories of her visit visits with michelle obama um and i'm grateful for um mrs obama's willingness to further inspire parker beyond the portrait i hope that readers will take away from this book that representation is indeed very important more now than ever and we hope that our book will inspire um children like parker and little ones to dream big dreams because anything is achievable you can even be an author of five years old right so dream big dreams [Music] how amazing is that so all you authors out there get started i don't care how old you are get your book going let's join the party come on i'll be introducing your book next year so get started writing it all right here's some books you need to read if you are a middle grade reader or want to be here's the way to start stella diaz by angela dominguez uh and she writes just these kind of funny sweet spot illustrated books um because she's both the illustrator and the writer which is kind of cool and she's telling her story or it's kind of her story a little autobiographical but also fictionalized about a shy mexican girl who becomes an environmental activist and makes a difference in her community who wouldn't want to read that so it's stella diaz has something to say and stella diaz never gives up so don't give up check these out so hi i'm angela dominguez i'm an author and illustrator and i've worked on quite a few books the books i'm going to talk today about is the stella diaz series uh stella diaz never gives up which is the second and this was the first zelidius of something to say and i am here in doyle's town pennsylvania with my little puppy petunia she's a boston terrier chihuahua mix it's about stella who is this character who is shy and in the first book she's really finding her voice and the second book she's still a little shy and she has to use these conversation starters to kind of help her which are like just fun facts that she shares to start a conversation but it's about her learning to become a leader when maybe you don't have the loudest voice in the room and so it's about this growth of this character and this continuing love of the oceans and also still has to do somewhat with her um trying to fit in the world because like stella i was born in mexico and grew up in the united states and sometimes i stumbled with my english and my spanish and with this book she visits mexico and she kind of has a connection of like what does it mean to be mexican what does it mean to be mexican-american so there's a lot in this book that i feel like a lot of kids can relate to and we're seeing all these wonderful activists like greta thundberg who are really caring about the environment and i wanted to show kids that they can be part of the solution in their own way more than anything i just hope this book inspires kids to speak up for themselves and also be passionate about something all right don't tell anybody else but here is one of my favorite kids books of the last year it's tristan strong punches a hole in the sky by kwami ambalya oh is this something else it's fantasy it's action it's mythology it's a mix of african-american folk tales and west african gods that just get all mashed together so we got john henry just duking it out with a nancy and one of the cool things about this book too is it's the first in this in a a series of books by rick riordan who you know from percy jackson so i mean if rick riordan likes it that's a great recommendation and this is going to be a series so get started and you are going to be amazed hi my name is kwame imbalya author of the tristan strong series tristan strong is a african-american boy who is dealing with grief and sorrow and so he has been sent by his parents down to his grandparents farm it's a new place it's scary there's no wi-fi things are terrible and then he meets someone very intriguing whose name is gum baby i wanted to write tristan strong punches a hole in the sky for a couple of reasons um the first and foremost i grew up listening to african american folk tales african folk tales um i was a one of four who we shared a bedroom and you know four kids in one room trying to get them to go to bed at night it was you know wild and tough so my parents would play stories on a cassette player they would play the anansi tales and we would listen to them and you know i would dream about anansi and all his trickster uh games and all of the different shenanigans that he would get into um so i wanted to write a story that involved those characters but to bring it forward for you know um readers today my children you know students uh young adults kids like the readers who are reading it right now um but the other reason that i wanted to write this book was because tristan is dealing with grief he has lost someone close to him um someone who he loves and cherishes and who meant the world to him that was his best friend um about six months before i started writing this book my father died and so writing about how tristan uh dealt with his grief throughout the book helped me help myself and also help my daughters uh go through the grief of losing their grandfather so it's a it's a two-part um answer and it's i love this answer because um it involves both dealing with grief and also dealing with wonder and joy two sides of a coin and something that i think we should present to readers like you as much as we can to show you that the world is not always high and the world is not always low but how we deal with the changes between both and then a lot of research was just me finding out how to tell a good story and that uh when you're reading a story it's completely different from when you're listening to a story and you might hear voices someone might do voices the cadence the rhythm the melody might change and so a lot of my research was not necessarily what stories to tell but how to tell that story writing your own version of a myth or a legend i mean it can sound intimidating you know you'll have um a lot of detractors a lot of people who say oh you know that's not what um john henry's hammer was supposed to look like or that's not what a nancy was supposed to sound like um and what you have to realize is that you have to write the version of the story that you find that attracts you um that sparks wonder in you uh for me it was um writing a nancy you know he's he's a trickster character but what is it what is a trickster character is he always playing jokes you know does he have puns um or does he just always have like a sly smile and so you're never quite sure if he's telling the truth or if you need to get a second opinion write the version of the story that speaks to you the one that's inside of you um because at the end of the day you're the one who's going to enjoy it whether someone else wants to read it whether someone else wants to read it aloud it doesn't matter write the story that matters to you thank you so much for tuning in thank you for having me thank you for reading and supporting my books thank you for reading and supporting your libraries your local libraries or whether it's the library of congress thank you for being readers thank you for enjoying stories and hopefully i'll get to read one of yours wow how about that well your next writer is a friend of mine who's gonna give you an earful too this guy moe willems you probably know who he is he's this guy don't let the pigeon drive the bus guy um also wrote some kanuffal bunny books and some of my personal favorites elephant and piggy books and in fact this next book is the elephant and piggy biggy piggy volume three could it be tell us more mo willems be yourself we know you will but i think a lot of adults frame the question by saying where do you get your ideas as if they're a thing like where you buy your shoes and ideas are not a thing ideas are a growth right a group yes ideas are like a plant they grow you have a seed of an idea and it gets bigger and bigger so as opposed to where do you get your idea how do you grow your ideas those are two very different ways of framing the question and i think that's why a lot of people a lot of artists have a hard time answering where do you get your ideas they're like you know we make i used to make a joke and say well i get them in belize because everything has to be believable you know there's because ideas aren't gotten they're not things ideas are too important to be things things are less important than ideas i just can't believe how much stuff we've got going on here isn't that crazy i mean you can read anything right well here's another thing you can read um our next author is a guy your parents probably know who wrote the da vinci code but now he wrote a book for you called the wild symphony and not only did he write this book he wrote the music to it it's the craziest thing i kind of love that it's it it has all of that stuff together all the different animals have a different part in the symphony um you can actually access it with your phone you can hear the music look at the pictures experience the book and dan brown's a guy who knows some libraries um and i love that he's such a fan of the library of congress and in fact we've got a little special treat for you too we've got the librarian of congress strolling through the library of congress with a friend of hers by the name of dalia marie arana she was four years old then and she had read over a thousand books already just trying to make us all feel bad but don't feel bad just read some more books let's catch up with her so tell us what you got dan my name is dan brown i am coming to you from my home in new hampshire this is my library where i keep one copy of all of my books from around the world and i call it the fortress of gratitude just because these books have enabled me to make great connections with publishers all over the world i'm a huge fan of the library of congress i've been there numerous times but i think for anybody who goes to the library of congress that the thing they always take away is that sense that we have when we first step into the reading room it is uh as i said in the novel it is considered the most beautiful room in the world uh by by many writers and uh and i certainly when i first saw it felt the same way and i was honored to uh to be able to be in there so thank you for that and a final hope for wild symphony is that inspires young people to to dare to be creative to dare to draw to dare to write to dare to make music the creative process for me personally and for many people is the single most rewarding aspect of my life to take something and create it out of nothing you take a blank piece of paper and you create a world or you take silence and you create a symphony uh you take a blank piece of paper and create a whole world of uh of drawings so um i i do hope that there will be young people who read wild symphony and not only enjoy it but think you know what i i'd like to do something like that i bet i could write poetry i bet i could draw but i can make music um so that would be that would be a real bonus if the book inspired people to uh to learn to love the creative process just in closing i wanted to thank the the library of congress for putting on this amazing festival uh it is so important to celebrate books in our culture we live in a world where we're increasingly tied to technology uh and books in all other forms are uh a reminder of where we come from and in a real sense where we're going uh and i just um i'm i'm grateful that we're taking the time and you're taking the energy to uh to celebrate books thank you my next author is a spectacular new talent on the scene jerrycraft oh man and his book new kid partially based on his own experience about you know going to a school but not really a school that was part of his neighborhood so the problem was like sometimes he was part of his neighborhood sometimes he was part of a school sometimes he was part of neither and it was hard to fit in but man i just i love all of the art in this and if you're a graphic novel fan you have to read this but hear it from jerry hi my name is jerry craft and i am a resident of noaa connecticut and a lot of times with graphic novels there's still some people that look down at it like you know a pro's book is like steak a fine steak and a graphic novel is like you know donut something like that that's just dessert but i know having written prose books that i put the same amount of work rewriting rewriting rewriting the editing process um you know the story arc the character development i put in any book that i've ever done the message in new kid is to just take a little extra time to get to know people so how to pronounce their name how to spell their name if your friend is chinese that's not the same as being korean that's not the same as being indonesian you know if they're dominican that's different than being puerto rican um so i really feel that if we take that time to learn about each other learn about the culture learn about food without always going yeah what is that like hey let me taste that let me look at it let me learn i think that we'll all be better off for it my message to aspiring writers and illustrators is i know that whenever i do school visits i always show homework from seventh grade that i used to draw superheroes on or even comic books that i would make because a lot of kids will look at new kid and go oh i can't even do that like i can do this either like i drew just like you did but it's a matter of what you want to do with it how much you practice and also not having some kids are so hard on themselves that they'll join like one little line and go oh i messed up and then spend the next 20 minutes erasing you know they will spend more time erasing than they do creating you know sketchbooks that are just half full and then thrown in the garbage because they didn't like it so give yourself a break you know [Music] our next author is somebody you might have heard of before um she's kind of big she's kind of great uh parents you probably know her as the most generous person on social media chelsea clinton you other people might have heard of her mom or dad but i don't know i think we need to hear about more from her because she had an amazing book out she persisted and her new book is she persisted in sports which kind of covers an amazing bunch of women half of whom you've probably never heard of or might have heard just a little bit but you need to know the real story so chelsea is bringing it to you um chelsea tell us what you got hi i'm chelsea clinton and i am currently sitting in chapaqua new york as a new mom reading books to my daughter charlotte and what the time was two and a half and and my infant son aiden just realized how many of the uh children's books were centered on and told through male kind of voices and and gazes even so many of the books um around animal characters were kind of told through kind of male ducks or male cows or male frogs and i wanted there to be kind of more women injected into the pages of children's story books and i certainly think we see um american ingenuity um in in sports and i think about you know some of the women that i uh highlight and she persisted in sports whether wilma rudolph who kind of overcame multiple illnesses and challenges as a child and kind of went on to kind of prove what was possible for black women athletes and was the first kind of image that so many americans saw on their television streams of a kind of fierce unapologetic strong successful um black women athlete and possibly for many white americans just a black woman kind of uh achieving improving what was possible kind of through her own brand of american ingenuity we think of ingenuity as kind of being the province of our of our scientists or our kind of creatives whether authors or um filmmakers you know visual artists performance all artists i think it's also really important that we recognize kind of ingenuity can come in the way someone teaches a class or in the way that someone um races across a finish line part of these stories for me are both to inspire kids to think and to see themselves to visualize themselves like you know in these character stories so that hopefully they are unafraid and unapologetic on the sports field um whatever kind of that field may be um and also to think like that isn't right you know i don't think it's okay that um these girls were told they couldn't do something i hope you enjoy that she persisted uh in sports and i hope that if you have books that you think we should be reading with my kids uh i hope you'll send those recommendations my way uh here's a little more history for you if you ever wondered about who was that woman who helped out our second president john adams uh that would be abigail adams and in this book leave it to abigail um barb rosenstock lets us know like what did happen abigail was incredibly important um to our second president i mean i think we really got all all kinds of great things in our government from her because she became involved and helped the president and she also became the mother of another president john quincy so how great is that abigail adams check her out hi i'm barb rosenstock the author of a bunch of non-fiction and historical fiction picture books for children and you're here in my writing office which used to be a bedroom um i live north of chicago illinois and my latest book is leave it to abigail the revolutionary life of abigail adams it's illustrated by elizabeth badly and it's about abigail adams and abigail was born before our country started um people talk about the founding fathers all the time but abigail was one of our founding mothers and she's one of the most important ones too she was the first american woman to talk about women's rights and she did that in a really famous letter to her husband john adams where she said the words remember the ladies she was trying to get john to put some idea of women's rights in our country's initial documents that were making the laws for the beginning of the united states um abigail also surprised people in millions of ways uh her whole life in a time when girls were supposed to stay quiet and in the background she was confident and competent she was a great parent a great politician a great writer a great business woman and whenever there were problems in her life people relied on her and um kind of leave it to abigail became one of the things that was said a lot about her she could do anything she used her skills to support her family and her country and um the other women in her life i love the library in general it's like my first memory is being taken to the library but the library of congress specifically um i wrote an entire book about the library of congress called thomas jefferson builds a library and obviously did a lot of research in the library of congress's own collections um to find out the information for the book and how thomas jefferson's books became the core of the collection i have actually used the library often um this other book otis and well discover the d was uh inspired in part by a librarian named connie carter who's at the library of congress and she was sort of the god mother of the book the book is dedicated to connie and um we did lots of work researching early ocean science in those collections at the library of congress and fight of the century um was in in part um kind of inspired by the library of congress's suffragist photo collection which um is on a specific site right now it's the 100th anniversary this year of the 19th amendment and um i used those photos and realized how much actual conflict there was in the suffrage movement and came up with the idea of alice paul and woodrow wilson and and the fight that gave women the right to vote how she had a battle for it so i use the library of congress kind of all the time i'm a big fan big fan everyone has a story kids especially kids have hundreds of stories to tell and i want them to know that their stories are important people need to hear what you think and you wish and you hope for and you dream about so writing is the process of playing with words really to tell a story so keep reading and keep writing and keep playing this this is turning into the history channel and i'm loving it because that's what i thought in fact half of these books back here is history comics little science fiction down there all my kids books over there uh all my goofy books there my fishing books there but here's a book i am so happy to add to my library because it was exactly that thing i was talking about where we think we've heard of the underground railroad and know about it and you certainly have heard harriet tubman's name but have you ever heard of william still and his freedom stories he worked at the same time as harriet tubman and he was a person his whole family ran away came up to pennsylvania and then he helped other slaves escape but the coolest thing was he kept a record of all the slaves that he was helping so in some ways and this there's these great end papers in this book that's from his actual diary entries some of this is the only way people can connect with their families still to this day uh and this is by don tate who's just an amazing writer it's this is another great thing like find a great book like this and read more of his stuff because i've met don before and he's just a spectacular guy about digging in and really making history come alive so check out one still and more don tate stuff [Music] good morning my name is don tate and i live in austin texas and i'm honored to be be visiting with all of you in my home studio i've been writing and illustrating children's books for 30 plus years but i've been right here in this studio for about 20 years i'm in warm cozy austin texas where um where i absolutely love living so i am really excited to introduce my next book is called william steele and his freedom stories father of the underground railroad and it publishes with peachtree and i'm going to read a bit of the story for you this story begins at a time when the united states was split in two in the north black people were free in the south they were enslaved by whites slavery was a nightmare back breaking work under a scorching sun [Music] lashing or worse no pay children were separated from their mamas and papas brothers and sisters sold away at auction never to be seen again sometime during the 1700s levin and sydney steele were held captive on a maryland farm forced to work their four children were two the family yearned to live free and so i wanted to tell the story of not only william steele but the many hundreds of african americans who played an important role in the success of the underground railroad system so what inspired me to tell william steele's story i love stories of little known historical figures when i was in school i remember studying all about rosa parks and dr martin luther king but those stories often didn't go beyond the stories of dr king and so when i got into publishing i wanted to to tell children the stories of other african-american historical figures who did who did great things in the face of adversity and so i thought that's the story that i want to tell i want to tell william steele's story so that children understand the role that we played in helping our own people so throughout history americans have demonstrated um considerable ingenuity and overcoming obstacles and those are the stories that i like to tell makes no difference whether we are talking about george washington or benjamin franklin who were imperfect figures they went on to do great things to make contributions to our world as did george moses horton who was an enslaved poet who became the first african-american to get a book published in the south and he published while he was still enslaved as did lonnie johnson who was the inventor of the super sulker sport gun william still recorded the stories of enslaved people as they passed through his office he not only recorded their stories but he recorded details like the color of their skin their height where they were running away from who had enslaved them it was his hope that he could help reunite enslaved people after they had escaped north to help them to reunite with their families little did he know that his work would have helped to reunite his own family so what children can do to be sure that their own stories don't get lost and preserved you can do exactly what i'm doing today and i just decided this recently i'm going to write a memoir i'm going to tell the story of my life in graphic novel form i'm going to use words and pictures and i encourage kids to tell their own stories not only so that they can take a look at and investigate their own lives but think about future generations of children who want to study and learn about your life today in 2020 say living through a pandemic or you know whatever it is whatever challenge that you may be living with at home think about that kid 100 years from now who wants to know what's going on in your life sit down and record your story every day talk about your family your brothers and sisters the things that are going around you in the world how do you feel about the circumstances that you're living through record those things because those are the details that will help future generations of people another middle grade book about it's called the three keys by kelly yang partially based on kelly's experience of growing up in california as a chinese immigrant her parents and they just had to like deal with well she had to deal with like being seen as an alien someone from outside and she and i know she's talked about how it just freaked her out as a kid saying like how am i an alien i'm a kid i've got friends i go to school um and at that time when she was growing up california started messing around with laws saying like well if you're not if you're an alien maybe you can't go to school and it's both like just shocking and topical but also funny and just uplifting and and just just a fun read so listen to kelly some more and then pick up this book [Music] hi i'm kelly yang and i'm the author of front desk and i'm also the author of three keys the sequel to front desk i've always wanted to write a sequel to front desk because in my mind the story was not over i wanted to see what happened to that family what happens to mia as she gets older and she has to deal with you know her friends at school and also people finding out what she does for a living which is she lives and works in a motel that was always so terrifying to me growing up as a kid you know i never saw that reflected in books or in movies and tv shows so i always thought that where i live was really not normal and so i always wanted to hide it and keep it a secret and in three keys mia's biggest secret is revealed to her class um because somebody in her class finds out that she actually does live and work in a motel and so she has to deal with the aftermath of having that truth be revealed but just to give you guys a hint it is not the end of the world and in fact becomes a really interesting turning point in the story and i actually in fact originally wrote front desk for my son who was only eight at the time and he had no idea how i grew up um because the way i grew up was so different from the way that he grew up um you know and he grew up like you know in a normal house and with like a dog and all these you know he didn't have to worry about going to the goodwill to find clothes like i would take him to target or whatever and so he had a really different life than the way at the way i was raised and the way i grew up um so when he was eight i thought to myself like i better tell him because if i never tell my own kids you know what does that say about me and so i took a huge leap of courage leap of faith because i didn't know how he was gonna react and i didn't want him you know i didn't want him to be embarrassed by it but i also didn't want him to to um feel sad for me because i had joy as a kid like i if you read front desk and you read three keys you'll see there's a lot of joy and fun in these books you know i had a fun childhood it was really fun so i wanted him to experience all of that the whole package you know the the hope and the optimism and the joy and just the silliness of growing up but also the real issues that we had to face and we had you know a lot of real issues like you know not having a turkey for thanksgiving just very real and like uh you know not having um all the fancy toys not having vacations never having a vacation was really hard growing up but i wanted to put that in with a heavy dose of hope so that he would have that empathy in him towards all people from all different walks of life all different ethnicities and be able to understand more about the world which is really what the front desk series was all about and when i took that leap of faith he loved it he at the end of that summer i remember he came back from camp and he was like mom you have to do something with that story and i said well what am i going to do about it and he said you have to you have to sell it you have to like let me make copies and sell them to my classmates and that's when i realized you know what first of all i better get a literary agent but also that um that it's really amazing what can happen when you share the truth and when you are not afraid to put yourself on the page so my final message for kids is never give up if you like writing like mia you know keep at it keep going to the library keep reading keep writing even if you're making mistakes i made a ton of spelling mistakes a ton a ton and ton of grammar mistakes growing up but trust me it'll get better it'll get easier and he'll get funner so just keep at it keep learning you guys i know we're going through a rough time right now but i believe in you and i'm here for you oh man here's one of my favorite books um because i love information books it's it's that thing where you like even for stuff you think you know about maybe you don't know everything maybe there's some more information you could learn about and that's the case with this book it's called finish the fight uh the brave and revolutionary women who fought for the right to vote and it's kind of interesting that this year was exactly a hundred years since we've ratified the 19th amendment to the constitution saying women could vote i mean my first question is why did that take so long the second one is who else was helping out and there's all these amazing women who you probably haven't heard of before i mean of course we've heard of susan b anthony but josephine st pierre ruffin no probably not so check it out be a more informed citizen and maybe find out some stuff that we can use today hi i'm veronica chambers and i'm the author along with several other new york times journalists of a book called finish the fight i come to you from hoboken new jersey and i'm in my apartment and i'd love to tell you about the book finish the fight is the story of the brave and revolutionary women who fought for the right to vote when i was growing up i studied women's history but i actually didn't learn a lot about suffrage so our book really focuses on the women and suffers that you don't often hear about we are often taught about susan b anthony and elizabeth katie stanton and sometimes we hear about alice paul but we really wanted to talk about women like mary church tyrell and women that are thought of as race women like ida b wells barnett but who were really integral to the suffrage story we also really really wanted to center the narrative of native american women into this um story partly because as one of the scholars that we interviewed said you know women have had the vote in the united states in for a hundred years but hada nishani women which is a nation in the native um american tribe system they have had political power for a thousand years you know we're at a moment where because of where we are in the country in the world and a public health crisis we're all spending a little bit more time alone we're spending a little bit more time inside but i think we also have a tremendous opportunity to connect um with greater ideas that can help us shape the future the suffrages they were going through world war one they were going through the spanish flu you find so many parallels in history and what you realize is that you know people survive and they find that ingenuity to go back to it they find creative solutions sometimes having limited um resources or choices helps you be more creative that's something to remember as a young person i think when i was a kid i thought if i was super rich and if i had all the help in the world i could do anything but i think actually not being super rich and only having limited help really forced me to dig into my own creativity and figure things out and try things and and not be afraid to try i would advise young people and the people who teach them their parents the teachers librarians to um really embrace this moment for connection and exploration and curiosity thank you so much for having us um me and my co-authors as part of this festival thanks veronica that is just amazing and i've got that book right here on my desk i'm reading it uh but our next author is really my favorite author i gotta say because it's me um i've been working on these books called the astronauts it's a three book series book two is just coming out oh here's book one the plant planet book two the water planet uh and book three is gonna be the perfect planet but the guy i'm working with uh steven weinberg my son-in-law pretty amazing too take a look at these guys oh hi well hello and welcome to the inside of our rocket ship how do you like that um so astronauts is the story of four super powered animals looking for a goldilocks planet they have to find a planet that's not as polluted as this one and earth is our narrator and she's not too thrilled about what's going on so these guys in this next book land on the water planet which has been taken over by clams clam mcconnell is making things bad but luckily there's a clam resistance there's susan b clampany and she gets together with the astronauts so well i don't want to give it all away but let me just tell you things get weird things get wild and as in every astronaut book there's a giant fold-out fight a battle royale astronauts versus bad clams you haven't seen anything like that and it ends with my favorite earth she says come on you guys we got to work on this together well that's it that's the national book festival you have been here thanks so much for joining us uh now go out there and and just like be yourself remember like we said be you i'll be me you be you will be us and just enjoy yourself read some books thanks guys

Channel: Library of Congress

Views: 938

Rating: 4.8333335 out of 5

Keywords: Library of Congress

Id: kmReffXcbg8

Length: 59min 57sec (3597 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 25 2020