{"id":1415,"date":"2011-11-14T22:03:35","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T03:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=1415"},"modified":"2011-11-14T22:03:35","modified_gmt":"2011-11-15T03:03:35","slug":"book-fair-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/miscellaneous\/book-fair-notes\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Fair Notes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1416\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1416\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1416\" title=\"ParadeofFamilies\" src=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/ParadeofFamilies-300x270.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"270\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/ParadeofFamilies-300x270.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/ParadeofFamilies.jpg 672w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-1416\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Heading into the Book Fair<\/p><\/div>\n<p>A parade of families streamed into the 20<sup>th<\/sup> CT Children\u2019s Book Fair this weekend to visit with authors and illustrators and slap high fours with The Cat in the Hat.\u00a0 Tomie dePaola, Mo Willems, and Jane Yolen all signed during the day Sunday when as many as 700 people per hour entered the Rome Ballroom on the UConn campus.\u00a0 It was packed, and interesting, and silly, too.\u00a0 Special thanks to Suzy Staubach and Terri Goldich for a smashing event.<\/p>\n<p>I had fun on a panel with fellow dystopian writers Suzanne Weyn, Michael Northrop, and Jeff Hirsch.\u00a0 Moderator Nikki Mutch asked provocative questions about what has inspired so many writers to tackle dystopias these days, and the replies encompassed our latest Irene and pre-Halloween snowfall disasters and the zeitgeist authors tap into.\u00a0 An attentive audience followed up with questions about fanfiction, what should be read in school, and how writers keep their books fresh when so many cover similar themes.<\/p>\n<p>My favorite part was definitely meeting kids who are writers.\u00a0 They are fearless.\u00a0 They come right up and start talking about why they love writing and how it\u2019s all they do.\u00a0 They talk about loving words and stories and voices.\u00a0 Their parents stand shyly a few feet back, looking proud, and like they know they\u2019re already way out of their league, trying to keep up with their kids.<\/p>\n<p>Honestly, if we can just get out of their way, the children know what to do.\u00a0 It\u2019s the most inspiring thing to see, even in glimpses in a packed room.\u00a0 \u201cCelebrating children and the books they read\u201d was the tagline of the fair, and truly, the children were the highlights of the day.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1417\" style=\"width: 385px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1417\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1417\" title=\"Clifford\" src=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Clifford.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"375\" height=\"219\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Clifford.jpg 375w, https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Clifford-300x175.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 375px) 100vw, 375px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-1417\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Suzanne Weyn, Jeff Hirsch, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Caragh O&#39;Brien, and Michael Northrop<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A parade of families streamed into the 20th CT Children\u2019s Book Fair this weekend to visit with authors and illustrators and slap high fours with The Cat in the Hat.\u00a0 Tomie dePaola, Mo Willems, and Jane Yolen all signed during the day Sunday when as many as 700 people per hour entered the Rome Ballroom [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1415"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1420,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1415\/revisions\/1420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}