Adirondack Daily Enterprise
March 5, 2022
Press release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Adirondack Family Book Festival to Bring Celebrated Authors to Lake Placid
WESTPORT, NY (March 3, 2022) — John Brown Lives! and numerous community partners are teaming up to host The Adirondack Family Book Festival at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in Lake Placid, NY, on Saturday, August 20. The festival will be free, open to all, and held outdoors.
The inaugural lineup features twelve nationally acclaimed authors and illustrators who write for young readers, including several Newbery and Caldecott honorees and New York Times bestsellers. From 10am-4pm, they will meet their fans of all ages, read aloud, and talk about their work. A youth panel and activities that pair select books with the natural beauty of the John Brown Farm and hands-on artmaking and discovery are also being planned.
Community partners include librarians, booksellers, local authors, teachers, and students.
“We are thrilled to work with such a wonderful team to bring the Adirondack Family Book Festival to the John Brown Farm,” said Martha Swan, Executive Director of John Brown Lives!. “It is particularly fitting that this celebration of community, diversity and storytelling be held at the historic site where the abolitionist Brown family lived alongside their Black neighbors of “Timbuctoo.”
“We’ve fantasized having a children’s book fest at the John Brown Farm for years,” Swan continued, “and a North Elba LEAF grant in the fall gave us seed money and the confidence that we could pull this off!”
Adirondack authors Kate Messner, Maxwell Eaton, and Amy Guglielmo will be joined by, among others, Kekla Magoon, whose YA nonfiction book Revolution in Our Time about the Black Panther Party was a 2021 National Book Award finalist; Jason Chin, winner of the 2022 Caldecott Medal for his illustrations in Watercress by Andrea Wang; Rajani LaRocca, whose Red, White, and Whole for middle-grade readers was the winner of the runner-up Newbery Honor; and Linda Sue Park is the author of many books for young readers, including the 2002 Newbery Medal winner A Single Shard and the NYTimes bestseller A Long Walk to Water (A full list of participating authors follows below.)
“As someone who’s traveled to book festivals around the world, I couldn’t be more delighted to be a part of this amazing celebration of stories right here in the Adirondacks,” said Kate Messner, award-winning Plattsburgh author. “It speaks to the reputation of Lake Placid and our book-loving community that so many brilliant authors and illustrators accepted our invitation to be a part of this inaugural event, and I’m so excited to welcome my colleagues to our beautiful mountains.”
Sarah Galvin, owner of Lake Placid’s popular Bookstore Plus, commented, “I couldn’t be happier that the first Adirondack Family Book Festival is on the horizon. Any day filled with stories, authors and illustrators is a gift! To have this lineup of talent coming to The Adirondacks is amazing!”
Bambi Pedu, Director of the Lake Placid Public Library expressed that she and children’s librarian Karen Armstrong “are looking forward to what we hope is the first annual Adirondack Book Festival encouraging and promoting literacy for everyone to enjoy. Children’s literature is a powerful tool to entertain, enlighten, and connect us all, from childhood to adulthood.”
For more information and find out how you can support the festival and get involved visit www.johnbrownlives.org or email info@johnbrownlives.org.
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John Brown Lives! (JBL!) is a non-profit freedom education and human rights project that brings communities together using history, education, advocacy, and the arts to address critical issues of our time. The official NYS Friends Group of the John Brown Farm State Historic Site, JBL! strives for the Farm to be recognized, supported, and visited as a site of conscience and a place for teaching, reflection, discovery, and dialogue for Adirondack residents and visitors of all ages.
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2022 Adirondack Family Book Festival Authors & Illustrators
New York Times bestselling author Tracey Baptiste is best known for the popular Jumbies series and Minecraft: The Crash. She writes fiction and nonfiction from picture books to young adult. Her most recent titles include Looking for a Jumbie, African Icons: Ten People Who Shaped History, and Because Claudette. Find Tracey online at www.traceybaptiste.com and connect on Twitter @traceybaptiste and on Instagram @traceybaptistewrites.
An enrolled citizen of the Nulhegan Abenaki Nation, Joseph Bruchac has authored over 170 books in many genres. His poems, essays, and stories have appeared in hundreds of publications from Parabola and National Geographic to Paris Review. His experiences, in addition to college teaching, include three years of volunteer teaching in Ghana and eight years directing a college program inside a maximum security prison. In 2021 his novel Code Talker was chosen by Time as one of the 100 best YA books of all time. His novel Rez Dogs was listed among the best books of 2021 by NPR. Learn more at https://www.josephbruchac.com/
Jason Chin (he/him) is a Caldecott medalist who writes and illustrates children’s picture books about science and nature. In his books he tries to explain science with imaginative storytelling. His titles include Grand Canyon (Caldecott Honor, Sibert Honor and Orbis Pictus award) and Your Place in the Universe (a 2020 Horn Book Fanfare title). His latest book, Watercress, written by Andrea Yang, won the Caldecott Medal. To learn more about the books he’s written and illustrated, visit his website: https://jasonchin.net/books/
Maxwell Eaton III is a highly tolerated author and illustrator of numerous picture books and graphic novels for children, including Bear Builds a House, Bear Goes Sugaring, The Truth About Your Favorite Animals series, The Flying Beaver Brothers series, Okay Andy, and more. When he isn’t writing or drawing, he can be found paddling a canoe in the Adirondack Mountains with his partner and two children. Find him online at http://maxwelleaton.com/.
Amy Guglielmo (she/her) is an award-winning author, educator, artist, and community arts and STEAM advocate. Her eighteen children’s book titles include the Christopher award-winning Pocket Full of Colors: The Magical World of Mary Blair, Disney Artist Extraordinaire (Atheneum 2017) and the new What the Artist Saw series with The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is also the Creative Director of Reading Rainbow Live and the co-founder of Outside Art: Plattsburgh Public Art Project.
Rajani LaRocca was born in India, raised in Kentucky, and now lives in the Boston area, where she practices medicine and writes award-winning books for young readers. Her middle grade novel in verse, Red, White, and Whole, is the winner of the 2022 Walter Dean Myers Award and a 2022 John Newbery Honor. She’s always been an omnivorous reader, and now she’s an omnivorous writer of fiction and nonfiction, novels and picture books, prose and poetry. She finds inspiration in her family, her childhood, the natural world, math, science, and just about everywhere she looks. Learn more about her at www.RajaniLaRocca.com.
Kyle Lukoff is the author of many books for young readers. His debut middle-grade novel, Too Bright To See, received a Newbery honor and the Stonewall award, and was a National Book Award finalist. His picture book When Aidan Became A Brother also won the Stonewall award. His newest titles are the novel Different Kinds of Fruit and the non-fiction picture book If You’re A Kid Like Gavin. While becoming a writer he worked as a bookseller for ten years, and then nine more years as a school librarian. He hopes you’re having a nice day. http://www.kylelukoff.com/
Kekla Magoon (she/her) writes novels and nonfiction for young readers, exploring themes of identity, community, empowerment, and social justice. Acclaimed titles include The Season of Styx Malone (winner of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award), How It Went Down (a Coretta Scott King Honor book), and Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People, which was a Michael L. Printz Honor winner and National Book Award Finalist. Kekla loves ice cream, board games, and her two energetic orange cats. She holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she now teaches. Learn more at her website: https://keklamagoon.com/
New York Times bestselling author Kate Messner is passionately curious and has written more than fifty books for kids who wonder, too. Her award-winning titles include picture books like Over and Under the Snow and The Brilliant Deep; novels like Breakout and Chirp; engaging nonfiction like The Next President and the History Smashers series; the Ranger in Time adventures; and the Fergus and Zeke easy readers. Kate lives on Lake Champlain. Online, you’ll find her on Twitter @KateMessner, and at her website, katemessner.com.
Linda Sue Park is the author of many books for young readers, including the 2002 Newbery Medal winner A Single Shard and the NYTimes bestseller A Long Walk to Water. Her most recent title is The One Thing You’d Save, a collection of linked poems. Linda Sue serves on the advisory boards of We Need Diverse Books and the Rabbit hOle museum project, and created the kiBooka website, www.kibooka.com, to highlight Korean American creators of children’s books. Visit her website at www.lindasuepark.com; follow her on Twitter @LindaSuePark.
Calvin Ramsey is a playwright, writer, and photographer. He is the author of Ruth and the Green Book and Belle, the Last Mule at Gees Bend and was a recipient of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Drum Major for Justice Award. He was born in Baltimore but grew up in Roxboro, North Carolina and now splits his time between New York City and Sarasota, Florida. Learn more at his website: http://calvinalexanderramseysr.com/
A two-time National Book Award Finalist, Laura Ruby writes fiction for adults, teens and children. She is the author of the Printz Medal Winning novel Bone Gap, as well as Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All. Other works include the Edgar®-nominated children’s mystery Lily’s Ghosts, the ALA Quick Pick for teens Good Girls, the York trilogy, and the picture book Me and Ms. Too. Laura is on the faculty of Hamline University’s Masters in Writing for Children Program. She makes her home in the Chicago area, and you can visit her online at https://lauraruby.com/.
Adirondack Family Book Festival 