On Saturday, August 18, 2018, don’t miss the Mississippi Book Festival downtown at the State Capitol. From fantastic picture books to young adult blockbusters, there are panels with authors who have written books for kids of all ages.

Here’s the roundup:

9:30 AM a.m. – Angie Thomas: Kidnote: Galloway Sanctuary
Presented by the Phil Hardin Foundation, the de Grummond Collection and the Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival

Angie Thomas, New York Times Bestselling author of the Black Lives Matter young adult novel The Hate U Give, will be speaking in the Galloway Sanctuary. The Hate U Give has been made into a film directed by George Tillman Jr., and is set to release October 19, 2018. Just three years ago in 2015, Angie Thomas announced at the first Mississippi Book Festival that she had just signed with her literary agent. For Thomas, so much has happened since then, and don’t miss the chance to hear one of the brightest literary stars speak right in her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi.

10:45 a.m. – Hope (Nation) and Other Four-Letter Words: Galloway Sanctuary
Presented by the James and Madeleine McMullan Family Foundation

Following Kidnote, this is a powerhouse panel filled with some of the biggest names in Young Adult Literature. Dr. Rose Brock, one of the founders of the North Texas Teen Book Festival, and editor of the collection of Young Adult short stories in the book Hope Nation will moderate.

  • Becky Albertalli: (Leah on the Offbeat) Albertalli is also the author of Simon and the Homosapiens Agenda, which you may know by the recent film, Love, Simon. Leah, Simon’s best friend, gets her own story.
  • Angie Thomas: (The Hate U Give) *see Kidnote!
  • Nicola Yoon: (The Sun is Also a Star) A love story that takes place in 24 hours, with two teens in New York City: one is doing everything she can to keep her family from being deported and other is about to have an interview for Yale to fulfill his family’s expectations. Yoon is also the author of Everything, Everything with a film by the same name.
  • Nic Stone: (Dear Martin) Following the lines between being black and white, Dear Martin is an incredible story of race, education, and the story of one Justyce McAllister, an honors student who gets put in handcuffs because he’s black, and who keeps a journal writing to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Julie Murphy: (Puddin’) The sequel to Murphy’s first novel, Dumplin’, which is so hilarious that I laughed hard enough to cry while reading it. The sequel does not disappoint.

12:00 p.m. – Picture This!: STATE CAPITOL ROOM 201 A
Presented by Sara and Bill Ray

Led by Ellen Ruffin, curator of the de Grummond Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi, this collection of children’s authors and illustrators celebrate the vital, enduring and delightful Picture Book – the gateway to literacy for all ages.

Picture books are NOT just books with pictures. They are interactive stories, histories, and an intricately interwoven book that must combine a visual and auditory form of reading—and keep the attention of small children!

This picture panel features THREE illustrators (Charles Waters, Don Tate, Sarah Jane Wright) and two collaborative projects. The first of the collaborative projects, Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship is by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, who write letters back and forth between their fifth grade selves is a powerful look at race and friendship. In Lola Dutch, newcomers and husband and wife team Kenneth and Sarah Jane Wright, whose lively little girl character Lola Dutch (who is just TOO much) may just be the next Eloise (by Kay Thompson) or Madeline (by Ludwig Bemelmans). Then there are three phenomenal non-fiction picture books including two biographies, beginning with A Child’s Introduction to African American History by Jabari Asim to Alabama Spitfire: The Story of Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird, by Bethany Hegedus, and Strong as Sandow: How Eugen Sandow Became the Strongest Man on Earth, by Don Tate (who also illustrated this biography!)

  • Jabari Asim: (A Child’s Introduction to African American History)
  • Bethany Hegedus: (Alabama Spitfire: The Story of Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird)
  • Irene Latham and Charles Waters: (Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship)
  • Don Tate: (Strong as Sandow: How Eugen Sandow Became the Strongest Man on Earth)
  • Kenneth and Sarah Jane Wright: (Lola Dutch)

1:30 p.m. – Meet Me in the Middle: STATE CAPITOL ROOM 201 A
Presented by the de Grummond Collection and the Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival

Moderated by yours truly, I’m excited to present some of the best middle grade books (for kids ages 8-12) published this year.

Lions and Liars is the funniest, laugh-out-loud story I’ve read for kids in a long time—think Holes meets summer camp gone wrong. The Parker Inheritance, is a mystery involving race, family, and the South that takes place over the course of several generations, culminating in present day Lambert, South Carolina. If Candice and the boy across the street can solve this mystery, they may be able to right an injustice done a long time ago. The Night Diary is a remarkable work of literary historical fiction featuring the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan where 12-year-old Nisha is half-Muslim and half-Hindu, and trying to find out where she belongs as her family flees the only home they’ve ever known. Charlotte Jones Voiklis is the granddaughter of Madeleine L’Engle (author of A Wrinkle in Time) and Voiklis’ biography of her grandmother, Becoming Madeleine, is truly a labor of love and a fascinating look at the young life of L’Engle, one of the first female science and fantasy writers for young readers, who left a huge legacy in children’s literature. In Ernestine, Catastrophe Queen, young Ernestine Montgomery is obsessed with the apocalypse, but instead of fighting off zombies, she uncovers a murder mystery in a grave-yard—think Harriet the Spy meets Coraline.

  • Kate Beasley: (Lions and Liars)
  • Varian Johnson: (The Parker Inheritance)
  • Veera Hiranandani: (The Night Diary)
  • Charlotte Jones Voiklis: (Becoming Madeleine: A Biography of the Author of A Wrinkle in Time by Her Granddaughters)
  • Merrill Wyatt: (Ernestine, Catastrophe Queen)

2:45 p.m. – Mississippi in the Middle: STATE CAPITOL ROOM 201 A
Presented by the de Grummond Collection and the Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival and University of Mississippi MFA Program

Augusta Scattergood, author of Glory Be, The Way to Stay in Destiny, and Making Friends with Billy Wong, will moderate this panel with authors who have Mississippi roots!

There’s a plethora of stories for kids set in the South, from Southern Gothic fairy tale (Goldeline) to a South Mississippi Electric Ghost Town and Walter Anderson-esque art mystery (Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe), and in A Long Line of Cakes, Wiles returns to Aurora County—the setting of books by Wiles including Love, Ruby Lavender and Each Little Bird that Sings—where the Cakes are a rambunctious family who travel from town to town setting up bakeries until it is time to move again—until they move to Aurora County, where Emma Lane Cake meets Ruby Lavender who teaches her something about friendship. An in Jackson’s A Sky Full of Stars, readers will return to the same 1950s Mississippi found in Midnight Without a Moon, where Rose wrestles with her decision to stay in Mississippi, even after the murder of Emmett Till.

  • Jimmy Cajoleas: (Goldeline)
  • Jo Hackl: (Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe)
  • Deborah Wiles: (A Long Line of Cakes)
  • Linda Williams Jackson: (A Sky Full of Stars)

An incredible literary event right here in the heart of Mississippi, don’t miss this year’s Mississippi Book Festival! Find out more information at msbookfestival.com

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