There’s this simply awesome event that comes to Humboldt every other year: the Children’s Author Festival. This is one of those years, with the festival hitting its crescendo from October 15-17.
Katy Longshore serves as a volunteer. She states that the motivation is “100% to promote literacy,” a vision stated in 1974 when the festival first began. “By bringing the actual creators to local schools, we hope to inspire children to pick up more books, maybe even write their own.”
Katy went on to say that the Humboldt event tends toward the unusual as literary festivals go because, rather than having the authors come to a central location, they go all over the county.
“We send them to 55 local schools to meet the kids,” she said. “We send a professional author to Orick School.”
25 authors attend, with travel and food costs paid by the festival.
Katy says that a number of former educators and librarians work on the event, noting: “We all feel very strongly that this festival and the way we do it proves very beneficial for students.”
Last year, an author spoke to a Pre-K group (think 4-year-olds) and worked with the children to draft a story with her interactively. Years later, those kids might not even remember that they met an author, but the spark generated in that room might well have lit an ongoing fire.
An author herself who writes young adult historical fiction, Katy participated in the festival in 2013 as one of the visiting writers. Performing some web research, I learned that her novels include several about the court of Henry VIII, following three different girls as they encounter love, popularity, lies and execution (you will likely recall that it could get all beheady in the Tudor world). She lived in Sacramento at the time, but she’s from Humboldt and has since returned home.
“One of the reasons I became a writer — and the reason I volunteer — is because I was a student at Bloomfield Elementary who got to hear a visiting author brought by the festival,” she added.
I asked Katy what has changed and what has remained the same over that period in literacy and reading. While she gave me the caveat that she is not an expert, what she has seen as a volunteer involves children and their families at the book sale related to the festival. Social media and the internet to the side, Katy described children and families as still being delighted to find and buy books written by people they’ve met.
“I personally still see children who love books, who want books, and enjoy reading,” Katy said.
Grants and donations fund the entire effort. Nearly two dozen sponsors power the festival. You can scan them and find other information on the festival here: https://www.authorfest.org/home.
Individuals can donate here: https://www.authorfest.org/donate/donate.
The festival also benefits from in-kind donations, with examples including the City of Eureka providing Zoo/Skywalk tickets and Dick Taylor donating chocolates for visiting authors.
This year’s festival is set, but organizers welcome volunteers for future festivals. Inquire here: https://www.authorfest.org/volunteer/volunteer.
In addition to school visits, the festival features two centralized events. There’s a book sale that is open to everyone. You can meet the authors, buy books and have them autographed. That’s on Saturday, Oct. 17, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Humboldt County Library in Eureka. And the Morris Graves Museum hosts an art display with images related to the festival’s illustrated books, which is open now and runs until Oct. 25.
This year’s theme is “Find Friends in Books.”
Katy’s parting thought was this: “We chose this theme because all of us who read find friends in the stories, and we find friends when we share the books.”
At this weird and fractured time, it’s a nicely relevant and unifying theme as well as truly good work.
Consultant Michael Kraft writes the Good Work series, volunteering on behalf of the Northern California Association of Nonprofits (NorCAN). NorCAN, a DreamMaker project of the Ink People Center for the Arts, supports connections between people and organizations that work every day to keep our communities strong by offering professional development, board support, networking connections and more. Learn more at https://norcal-nonprofits.org/. To nominate a deserving nonprofit organization to be profiled, email michael@kraftconsultants.com.