Houston Book Festival Inspires Tweens

Author Richard Peck with a young fan.

Last weekend, 350 students and their parents gathered at the Bobby Shaw Middle School for the inaugural Tweens Read Book Festival [1], organized by Houston librarians with help from Cathy Berner, children’s/YA specialist and events coordinator for Blue Willow Bookshop [2].

The success of the Greater Houston Teen Book Convention [3] for the past two years inspired its organizers to create a similar event for younger readers. “After the TeenBookCon, we thought, Hey, why don’t we do something for the middle grades?” said Berner.

For Tweens Read, Blue Willow, whose owner, Valerie Koehler, has been on the TeenBookCon board since its beginnings, recruited several well-known authors to lead panel sessions and served as the event’s official bookseller.

Humor panelists Michael Buckley, Crystal Allen, and Clete Smith.

Houston librarians organized the event, which was run in the same way as the TeenBookCon. The keynote address was presented by author Richard Peck, followed by a variety of panel sessions, including one entitled “Better than Knock-Knock Jokes,” which covered humor writing, and “It Takes All Kinds,” which was led by authors from a wide variety of genres: Alan Sitomer, Lindsey Leavitt, Christina Mandelski, Jason Pinter, and Obert Skye.

Blue Willow was able to bring 13 authors [4] who were all “so enthusiastic about participating,” Berner said. “The response was truly fantastic.” After the event, Sitomer, who wrote about it on his blog [5], said, “What better way is there to build older readers than to start by building younger ones. Tweens Read, you rocked!”

Author Lindsay Leavitt with a young fan.

Blue Willow sold the featured authors’ books all day during the festival, and all of the authors were available to sign their books at the end of the day.

“It was just amazing,” said Berner. “The librarians and teachers put in a tremendous amount of time to host such a great event. The authors were really, really delighted, the librarians were so pleased, and the kids were inspired.”