Last week was the Fay B. Kaigler
Children’s Book Festival. I’m still not sure I’m completely recovered from it
after all the tremendous amount of work we did; I spent most of the week
running around like crazy and I don’t think I even remember everything. Early
in the week we started getting everything ready. I prepared the shirts and
notecards which de Grummond sells and took them to the bookstore, where an
entire book festival section is created, with the de Grummond items and books
for all of the authors who come to the festival. They have signings every day
of the festival and patrons have the opportunity to purchase books prior to the
signings.
Wednesday we spent the whole morning
working on the exhibit area in Cook Library, getting it ready to open back up. We
finished the labeling process, which meant we had to figure out which label
went with which picture. For the most part this was easy though there was a
series of pictures from one book that were labeled by page numbers and we had
to determine which one was which. (They weren’t actually hung in strict
numerical order.) We also were worried about leaving the doors open to the
exhibit area without any security in place, so added the security strips the
library uses to the backs of all the paintings. The cases with the realia were
locked, but it is possible some of the paintings could be stolen because they
are small enough to fit in a bag.
Thursday was the biggest day for de
Grummond because this was the first year the Ezra Jack Keats Awards have been
at Southern Miss. This is a huge event for the collection and everyone involved
is really excited that we have it now. Thursday morning we went to the
Medallion session with Jane Yolen. It was really great until the very end when
she started talking about her cat dying. There was a great point to the
story—that books allow you to express emotion that you might not feel
comfortable expressing otherwise—but I hate that the thing that will stay with
me was the story about the cat dying. It demonstrated quite well how much of an
incredible storyteller she is though. I also helped them prepare for the Awards
luncheon. Though I didn’t attend it, I was busy the entire time they were in it
anyway. I also discovered that the bookstore was out of many of the sizes of
the new EJK shirts, so we went back to the office and got more shirts and put
together more boxes of cards. I also got to go to the EJK lecture with Anita
Silvey. It was a discussion of the history of the picture book in America and
it was really interesting.
Thursday night we had a reception for
the award winners downtown at the train depot. I was technically off those
hours, and it was really enjoyable. I felt especially great when the curator
thanked the student workers for everything that we’ve done for the reception.
Friday we decided since we had barely gotten to sit down the rest of the week
to relax. It was nice to get a breather since I was back to work that afternoon
doing things for the other office. I was so exhausted at the end of the week
that I didn’t want to get out of bed Saturday. My entire body was aching, but I
really enjoyed the festival and it was definitely worth the effort.
Link to the Fay B. Kaigler Children’s
Book Festival: http://www.usm.edu/childrens-book-festival
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