Lititz Storytelling Festival

 

Fall is coming and so is the Lititz Storytelling Festival!!!!!!!  On Friday September 13th the fun begins with workshops and performances from 10 am to 10 pm???

ON Saturday, it begins all over again - workshops, a story swap and more and more and EVEN MORE STORIES!!!!!!!  I am in exclamation mark heaven! Because I love stories that much.

And also, here are very important things you should know about this year's festival in Lititz.

Jay O'Callahan will be performing.  Be still my wildly beating heart.

My friend, Charles Kiernan, will also perform.  I need to sit down.

Other tellers include Ed Stivender - he of the Morris Dancers -, Kim Weitkamp, Charlotte Blake Alston - oh yeah! - Rita Clarke, Ken Sensenig (say that 10 times fast), Marie Winger, Terri Mastrobuono and David Worth.

Now, I have made myself very very worried because........

I will be telling at this festival, too - with all these great storytellers.  I am feeling faint.  Do you think I will be up to the task?

Here's how to find out.  Come to the festival and listen to my stories and to the other tellers to find out if I measure up.  Watch for a weekend pass giveaway - on this blog - very very soon.

Lost Things

On Wednesday, I headed off to a meeting with the Summer Staff from PCL, my former hangout.  One of these staff people is my successor; two are teen volunteers I have known and loved - and trained - for years; one is my trusty sidekick who is now my successor's trusty sidekick - and the only person there who wasn't at least 30 years younger than I am!!!!  Guess which one got sick and couldn't show up.  I miss you, Trusty Sidekick.

There is a certain joy only attained when you spend time with people who ALSO read books, lots and lots and LOTS of books, and who ALSO enjoy talking about books.  It's like a reunion of the tribe.  The BooksRockians together again.  So awesome! (Even if they ARE all 30 + years younger than I am.)

But to make this outing even more awesome, I found an ARC of Cynthia Voigt's Mister Max : The Book of Lost Things on the doorstep as I raced out the door.  Ooh baby, and no, kind successor, the book is NOT for you.

I started the book and I can foresee trouble at the start.  Max's parents are actors - trouble right there.  Max's parents have been offered a job working for a Maharajah in far-off India - nonononono!  Don't take that job.  At first, Max is not included in this offer.  Now, that was the most ominous of the conditions of the job - because the book is about Max.  It says so in the title.  So, if Max is not invited, then something is amiss.  So far, that something has not happened.  But it will!!  And it will probably involve things that have been mislaid - such as ...children?  elephants?  bicycles?  Stay tuned.

Or buy the book yourself.  It's in bookstores on September 10th.

Stories about stories

So, what did you do today?  Really?  Hmmmm.  Whoa!  What happened then?

Please don't ever tell anyone that you can't tell stories.  Everyone tells stories.  It's how we touch each other.

I just finished two fine new children's books, Bo at Ballard Creek by Kirkpatrick Hill, and The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp by Kathi Appelt.  And stories - and the telling of stories - featured in both of them.

Bo loves hearing the story of how she ended up with her two huge papas in a gold mining town in Alaska.  And she loves hearing the stories of how the "boys" who work at the mine got to Ballard Creek.  Everyone has a story - however short.  Little Bo gathers adventures that will turn into stories, too.  This book has been compared to The Little House on the Prairie series.  The descriptions of life in a gold mining town in 1929 and 1930 are lovingly detailed.  Bo is a character I hope to read about again.

The Sugar Man is just a story to most of the people around Sugar Man Swamp, but not to Bingo and J'miah the new information scouts of Sugar Man Swamp.  They know he's real and they know they must only wake him up in an emergency.  What the two raccoons don't know is that an emergency is heading their way.
Bingo, J'Miah and a grieving 12-year-old boy named Chap must protect the Sugar Man Swamp from greedy developers.  Throw in 17 rapacious, destructive and awful wild boars and you have stories to the top of your ears!  Short, short chapters keep the pages turning.  And stories about the Sugar Man and his friends and enemies crop up over and over.

Long Live Stories!!!

Jabba the Puppett and Best Books!

Children's Book Review offers several lists of favorites here.  Keep The Children's Book Review on your favorites list.  Hmmm, I wonder.  Can I Pin their site?  I can, but only one book at a time. 

The Surprise Attack of Jabba the Puppett by Tom Angleberger is on sale TODAY!!!  Oh, why did I give away my entire Tom Angleberger collection to that school librarian?  WHY? 

I must read this book!

 So much to do.  See you soon.