Every year, right before school lets out and summer begins, my city celebrates the written word in a big, big way.
The Children’s Festival of Reading has been going on for more than fifteen years and every year 12,000 or more people crowd into World’s Fair Park to laugh, dance, sing, and weave their way through a number of booths honoring books of all genres.
I arrived at Word’s Fair Park at around 8:30 to find my tent and start setting up. STORY CATCHER PUBLISHING and TAEKWONDO YOUTH ALLIANCE had teamed up to give away free self defense lessons and a bevy of books!
A number of my Taekwondo students had signed up to help at my booth today. This is one of my black belts doing a little “community service” work. If you look closely at the tablecloth, you will discover my little yard sale treasure when I came across someone selling a bolt of “book” designed cloth that was a perfect fit for my display table! My sister doesn’t like being photographed so don’t tell her I snuck this picture in when she wasn’t looking…;~)
It threatened to rain all day but never did, so many people braved the potential thunderstorms to come out and have a little fun.
They even had a panel of authors from around the country speaking about their work and the art of writing well enough to become published.
As always, I LOVED all the excitement of this festival and I got a chance to share my two passions…writing and taekwondo…with the many children who stopped by my booth. Now, it’s time to recover from my day in the sun and get ready for my next adventure into the indie world of publishing.
Be sure to check back next week when I talk about the next step in setting up STORY CATCHER PUBLISHING and counting down the days until the ebook release of LUNADAR: Homeward Bound!
International best selling, award winning author, Donna L Martin, has been writing since she was eight years old. She is a 4th Degree Black Belt in TaeKwonDo by day and a ‘ninja’ writer of children’s picture books, chapter books, young adult novels and inspirational essays by night. Donna is a BOOK NOOK REVIEWS host providing the latest book reviews on all genres of children’s books, and the host of WRITERLY WISDOM, a resource series for writers. Donna is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators and Children’s Book Insider. She is a lover of dark chocolate, going to the beach and adding to her growing book collection. Donna’s latest book, My Journey, My Journal, is scheduled to be released by Expert Insights Publishing in the Fall 2018.
