The National Book Festival

Yesterday Aimee and I attended the National Book Festival.  It is a one-day annual event that features some of the nation’s best authors.  This year can be summed up in one word: Hot.  It was over 90 degrees and it felt like it.  However, despite the heat we had a lot of fun.  The first author we listened to was Suzanne Collins.  Suzanne Collins wrote the Hunger Games series.  All three books are great – but the first two are the best of the series.  When we got to the tent where she was speaking we found out we weren’t the only people who wanted to listen to her.  Her tent was packed and a crowd of people had formed around the perimeter to listen.  We joined the crowed and listened to her talk about why she wrote the books and some of the messages she was trying to convey to the readers. 

Next we listened to Ree Dreummond, the Pioneer Woman (above).  She was really interesting and was one of my favorite speakers.  She grew up in a suburban town, lived in LA for a while, then married a Oklahoma cattle rancher.  She now lives on the cattle ranch and blogs about her life (this is one of Aimee’s favorite blogs).  She is a funny woman. 
We also listened to Jules Feffer and Norton Jester, the author and illustrator of The Phantom Tollbooth.  They were an interesting duo.

We finished up the day by going to the Modern Museum of  Art.  We spent most of our time in an exhibit featuring 1500-1600 composite art.  Most of the paintings were done by Giusepe Arcimboldo.  When we saw the paintings we could not believe that they were painted that long ago – they look like something an artist would do today.  Above is a display of one of the “people” in Arcimbolo’s paintings.  It has an uncanny resemblance to some people I know.