books stock photo

Need more books but libraries are closed?

Where to find free e-books for kids

Print books are best for developing minds, but if you’re looking for something new to read while libraries and bookstores are closed, there are options for electronic books, and some of them are free:

Hoopla Digital works with many public libraries to let readers check out e-books, audiobooks and comics with their public library cards. The site has more than 4,500 titles. Hoopla lets multiple people check out the same title. Readers are allowed a set number of titles per month. In West Virginia, participating libraries include the West Virginia Library Commission, Clarksburg-Harrison County, Bridgeport, Marion County, Kanawha County, South Charleston and Morgantown Public Library.

WVDELI, or the West Virginia Digital Entertainment Library Initiative, is the result of several libraries collaborating years ago to deliver materials in new formats. E-books and audiobooks for all ages check out on your library card like physical materials. The newer Libby app is a pleasure to use. Participating libraries include Bridgeport, Clarksburg-Harrison County, Fayette County, Kanawha County, Lowe, Lynn Murray Memorial, Marion County, Mary H. Weir, Morgantown, Ohio County, South Charleston, Southern Area and Swaney Memorial Library.

Library of Congress Center for the Book offers classic titles for young readers and other ages. Expect PDFs you can read on your device, including “The Ugly Duckling” and Anne of Green Gables

Open Library, a project of the non-profit Internet Archive, asks you to create a free account to check out digital versions of books, like any library. This site offers titles from popular kids’ collections such as Harry Potter, Nancy Drew, and Junie B. Jones. Genres include fantasy, young children’s, young adult and middle readers.

jeshoots-com-__ZMnefoI3k-unsplash

How long does the coronavirus live on stuff?

From playgrounds to doorknobs to your mail, here’s the best we can find.

By Kristen LeFevers


Hard surfaces:

The virus that causes COVID-19 can survive on hard surfaces, such as plastic and stainless steel, for up to 72 hours, according to James Lloyd-Smith, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, NPR reports. This means that counters, tabletops, doorknobs, children’s hard toys, phones and devices and other flat, hard surfaces should be regularly disinfected. 

Cardboard:

The same unpublished study said the virus did not survive beyond 24 hours on cardboard.  

While it can last that long, people are not likely to catch COVID-19 by handling mail, Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, says.

Wash your hands after handling the mail to be sure, she said.  If you’re still concerned, however, there’s nothing wrong with wiping down packages and their contents once they’re delivered.

In the absence of more specific recommendations, Read Aloud treats glossy book covers like hard surfaces and regularly disinfects them.

Playgrounds:

Dr. Jenny Radesky, a developmental behavioral pediatrician at the University of Michigan, recommends against playgrounds, where germs can accumulate. Sunshine is a good disinfectant, but the effect of the sun’s rays on the new coronavirus is not yet known, reports the New York Times. However, all public health sources recommend children and adults go outside, for both physical and mental health, as long as they keep at least six feet from people from other households.

How to clean your house:

Clean high-traffic areas of your house daily with soapy water, a soap spray or disinfecting wipes, and then wash hands (and gloves, if you use them) afterward, recommends the New York Times

Think door knobs, light switches, refrigerator and microwave doors, drawer handles, remote controls, counters and table tops, toilet handles, faucet handles. 

Soap or hand sanitizer?

Hand sanitizer is great if you don’t have access to soap and water, but it turns out that old-fashioned soap and water are more effective, according to a recent article from Vox.

That’s because soap pulls the virus apart and makes it water-soluble, causing it to disintegrate, Palli Thordarson, a chemistry professor at the University of South Wales, has told several publications and posted on Twitter. 

Technique matters. As all the posters show, wash hands with soap for at least 20 seconds. Rub all parts of the hands, including fingernails, between fingers, and the backs of hands.


Kristen LeFevers is a senior in English at the University of Charleston.

image (6)

How to talk to kids about the coronavirus

By Kristen LeFevers


Fight fear, as well as the new coronavirus, with information. But not too much, and keep it age-appropriate, says Jennifer Randall Reyes, a behavioral health clinician at WVU’s Health Sciences Center.

“Facts decrease anxiety,” she said. With the spread of COVID-19 dominating headlines and disrupting everyday lives, it’s easy to feel anxious.

Talk about these subjects in ways that decrease anxiety and reinforce healthy habits, for both children and adults:

— “Kids are like adults — they want to know what’s going on,” Randall Reyes said, but limit their electronic time. “Keep them as far away from the news as possible.”

Instead, parents should talk to their kids about why they’re staying home, to protect the most vulnerable — the elderly and the immune-suppressed.

— She also said that children can get sick from the virus and need to know that. “Acknowledge it as fact, but tune in to their level.” She even suggested setting aside time each day, as a family, to discuss questions or concerns that the children might have. 

“Be as honest as you can without increasing their anxiety,” she said. Also, use words children understand. “Anxiety is an adult word. Stress and worry are more age-appropriate.”

— For teenagers, parents should monitor what news outlets their children are accessing on their devices.

— Don’t just tell children to wash hands. Do it with them. It is easy to forget the basics in a time of crisis, even for adults, she said. Modeling healthy habits, rather than just talking about them, benefits everyone. 

— Get good sleep.

— Play.

“Kids’ learning language is play,” she said.

If parents can bring an element of fun to healthy habits, they should.

Encourage children to think of five ways to turn a light switch off or without touching it, for example. “Make a game of it.”


Kristen LeFevers is a senior in English at the University of Charleston.

bento-box-lunch-plastic-food-1296x728-header-1296x728

Free and reduced meal resources for families

Many West Virginian families rely on schools to provide lunch and sometimes breakfast to their children throughout the week. While schools are close due to the COVID 19 outbreak, these families are struggling.

The following is a list of resources for families who need meal assistance during this crisis. It will be updated regularly as we find out about new options across the state.

Statewide

West Virginia Department of Education Feeding Sites in All Counties


Cabell County

Stewart’s Hotdogs

They are offering some serious meal deals for families. They’ll serve you at your car window, so it’s a safe option for self-quarantined folks. Check their Facebook page or give them a call for the latest updates.


Kanawha County

Suzi’s Hamburgers in South Charleston

“Don’t hesitate to bring your kiddos! No judgment! We are here to help! We DO NOT require an adult to purchase a meal before a child will receive free food.”

Happy Days Cafe, South Charleston

Free PB&J sandwiches and chips Monday-Friday, 1-3 pm.

Mountain Pie Company on the River

Kids 12 and younger eat for free off the kids menu

coronavirus hero

Readers to postpone school visits until further notice

Dear Readers,

Thank you for your commitment and service to West Virginia children.  

In the interest of slowing the spread of the coronavirus, please postpone reading in schools until further notice. Please let your teacher know.

Even if you are not in a particularly high-risk group for complications from COVID-19, it is important for all of us to take every step possible to slow the spread of the infection.

Here is an excellent explanation of how cancelling gatherings before a case is confirmed will save lives:

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/10/21171481/coronavirus-us-cases-quarantine-cancellation

In addition, for the health of you, your families and your communities, here is another good story explaining how soap and water (which is plentiful) destroy this virus better than anything else (although hand sanitizer is good if soap and water are unavailable). 

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/11/21173187/coronavirus-covid-19-hand-washing-sanitizer-compared-soap-is-dope

We are in the process of cancelling orientations and other events through the end of March. We will assess April events as they draw nearer. 

We will post updates on our website and on Facebook and Twitter as warranted. Those sources will also be good ways to keep in touch and to share more frequent updates as we confront this challenge together.

Read Aloud is still working, still active, still getting the message out to families about the importance of reading for fun, still working on book distribution projects. We hope you will safely continue to model good reading habits for the children in your lives.

If anyone arranges a new way to share their love of books with children without risking the spread of this virus, please let us know. Putnam County Library on Thursday announced it would move as many programs as possible to Facebook Live, for example. https://twitter.com/putnamlibrarywv

This glossary of terms is very helpful: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/science/coronavirus-terms-to-know.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

If the recommended social distancing threatens to turn into social isolation and is getting you down, here is some commiseration from the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/with-the-coronavirus-hell-is-no-other-people

If you are on social media, look us up. Let’s keep our distance, but not be isolated.

If not, give us a call or email. We can chat. Maybe we will come up with a new good idea.

Thank you again, and be safe,

Dawn Miller
Executive Director

img_1608

A Doctor’s Advice on Reading

Parents want to do what’s best for their children, but there is confusion about what is best. Dr. John S. Hutton recommends:

  • Read picture books for at least 15 minutes a day with your child. Longer is fine.
  • Start shortly after birth. With infants, reading is not about learning the ABCs or even understanding the story. It is about establishing the routine and starting a dialogue.
  • Keep children away from phones, tablets and other screens, including TV, before age 2. The one exception is video chatting with loved ones who are far away, but not until 18 months.
  • Phone and tablet apps are easy to carry and to use, and marketers promise learning benefits. But those apps have not been studied and shown to work. “Reading, by contrast, has been well studied,” Hutton said. “We know it works, but it is just kind of oldfashioned.”
  • For toddlers, limit screen time to an hour a day.
  • Keep reading with children even after they start school and after they can read themselves.
  • Don’t use screens to pacify children. Children are learning to handle their emotions and control their reactions. “They need practice, and if they’re constantly soothed with devices, they are short-circuiting this process and their ability to handle their own stuff. They don’t learn to regulate their behavior,” Hutton said.
  • Keep screens out of the bedroom, where they tend to lead to later bedtimes and disrupt sleep, homework and reading. “That’s one of worst places for screens to be. Anything that disrupts sleep causes all kinds of trouble.”
Two pupils leaning on a pile of books while reading on touchpad

How Accelerated Reader turned my daughter off books

By Lynn Kessler

I’ve been reading to my daughter, who is now 12, since she was born. She always loved it. At 6 months old, she would sit for long stretches on my lap while we read Go, Dog. Go! and Bear Snores On. Her first full sentence, at 18 months, was “Read Dog Go.” I knew then she was destined to be a great reader.

Through preschool and kindergarten, her reading skills and scores were always above expectations for her age. We snuggled up and read together every night before bed.

When she started first grade and began using the Accelerated Reader (AR) program, she did well on the tests, scored a lot of points, and looked forward to taking tests and receiving rewards and recognition for her achievements.

I recall a conversation around this time with a friend in education who was not a fan of AR. The program, she said, was detrimental to the intrinsic motivation that is critical to develop lifelong, avid readers.

“I don’t know,” I responded. “She seems very motivated.”

Cut to the beginning of summer vacation. My 7-year-old is bored.

“Why don’t you read a book?” I suggest.

Then, the reply I never expected: “No way! School is out. I don’t have to read!”

After I collected my jaw and my heart from the floor, I called my AR-averse friend to say, “You were right.”

Accelerated Reader, commonly known as AR, is a computer-based program that seeks to encourage kids to read more independently, improve student comprehension and reading skills, and provide a tool for teachers to evaluate student progress and adjust instruction and interventions accordingly.

Renaissance, the for-profit company that owns and sells AR to schools, says on its website:

“Every student can become their most amazing self and discover a lifelong love of reading with the guidance of an expert teacher. Designed based on years of careful research to help teachers introduce students to the magic of books and reading, Accelerated Reader products are the most widely used K–12 reading practice programs.”

I was not able to find pricing information on the Renaissance website, but my general research found that it can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000 a year to implement and maintain the AR program, depending on the size of the school and the package selected.

Renaissance offers plenty of research to support their product, and it seems that the company has attempted to improve upon areas that have received critical feedback. However, there are many literacy experts who feel the program undermines intrinsic motivation and the development of a genuine love of reading.

A report from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES) found only two studies that met the agency’s research design standards and evaluated those results. The Institute concluded: “Accelerated Reader was found to have mixed effects on comprehension and no discernible effects on reading fluency for beginning readers.”

The research above focused on measurable academic outcomes — changes for which students can be tested. But what about motivation?

Studies examining intrinsic and extrinsic motivation have shown that rewarding children for a certain behavior can produce immediate results, but then backfire. After an initial period of improvement, students begin to perceive the activity they are completing for a reward as a chore. It is something to be done so they can move on to something they enjoy.

That research is parallel with my personal experience with Accelerated Reader. I believe that this program — now a part of students’ grade calculations in our elementary and middle school — inflicted significant damage upon the years of success I had in encouraging a love of reading in my daughter.

That does not mean, of course, that this will be the case for every child. My younger daughter, a voracious reader, excelled in the AR program until third grade when she struggled to get enough points. That challenge has continued in fourth grade. It concerns me that the goals set for students by the program, and the requirements for grading, become more difficult just as children reach the critical age in third to fourth grade that is widely acknowledged in education as a make-or-break point for reading skills.

I was a Read Aloud volunteer in my 9-yearold daughter’s class. We finished reading The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. The kids thoroughly enjoyed it. They were engaged in the story and always excited to recap each week, discuss the book, and read more. They were gratified by the ending. After considerable sorrow and hard times for Ivan and his friends, the kids were delighted that the characters found peace and happiness.

Then they reached for their tablets and asked if they could take the AR test.


Lynn Kessler, former Read Aloud staffer, is a reader, writer, mother of two and a Read Aloud volunteer in Kanawha County.

8950a7d99186ddd213be6945cd81bd04

James Patterson: ‘It’s not the school’s job to get our kids reading’

To prepare for James Patterson’s appearance at the West Virginia Book Festival in October, Kanawha Circuit Judge Carrie Webster printed a letter the bestselling author had written to his son Jack back in 2007. It was a loving letter at Christmas, urging his son to read for the joy of it, not just to get into Harvard. Patterson promised to give his son at least one book every Christmas and several for the summer.

Webster served as host and moderator of the author Q&A, and confided to him that she wished her own daughter read more.

“It’s your moms’ job,” he said to the judge’s daughter and to the crowd. “She says you are smart, but you could read more.

“It really is,” he said. “It’s not the school’s job to get our kids reading. It’s our job. It’s on the parents, the grandparents, aunts and uncles, all that stuff.”

Patterson didn’t read much as a kid. He thinks it is because his parents and the nuns at his school did not put enticing books in his hands. He discovered reading as a young adult working night shifts at a mental hospital.

Then years later his own son was uninspired by books.

“I said, ‘Jack, you have to read over the summer.’

He said, ‘Do I have to?’

I said, ‘Yeah, unless you want to live in the garage.’”

But the key thing is, he said, kids must have books they really enjoy.

“We went to the local library and got about a dozen books, and by the end of the summer he had read 12 books. It’s going to vary with your kids. He went from being not very interested to going to the library in his school.”

A reader told Patterson that her 7-year-old came running in after a visit to his school library saying: “Nana! Nana! Look what I found. It’s James Patterson!”

“He didn’t know you were a children’s book author,” she said.

Many people don’t know it, he said. One reason he writes for kids: to give them the kind of page-turners that keep them coming back.

“As I say, I think the important thing is if you are a mom or dad or whatever, it really is your job. We’re the ones who are responsible. It’s great to teach your kid how to ride a bike and how to throw a ball, but if they’re not at least competent readers, we’re putting them behind the eight-ball.

Patterson’s son Jack, now 21, is a reader and has since collaborated with his dad on a picture book, Penguins of America.

“Look. We have rules in the house. You can’t come in and track mud on the rug. You’ve got to show up to meals. It just needs to be a rule,” Patterson said.

Afterward, Webster thought back. “I loved reading as a child — Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden,” she said. As an adult, she enjoyed Patterson’s Alex Cross series, though thanks to her phone, she doesn’t read like she used to.

Her daughter loved reading in the early grades (and was a big Accelerated Reader fan). “Now she reads only when she has to,” Webster said.

Around the time of Patterson’s appearance, her daughter asked if they could read together like they used to.

“We need to do that,” Webster said. “I’m going to take her to the bookstore.”

RBED-cover_new

Are you raising a reader?

The more time we spend reading to the babies and children in our lives, the better their young brains organize themselves, forming networks essential to learning to read around age 6.

Dr. John Hutton can see it in their brain scans.

The more we pacify babies and children with screens, even supposedly educational apps, the more screen time short circuits essential connections that the brain is primed to develop in the first years of life.

He can see that, too.

A pediatrician at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and “spokes doctor” for the national campaign, Read Aloud 15 Minutes, Hutton presented some of his findings to doctors and educators at Marshall University in October at an event sponsored by Marshall’s June Harless Center for Rural Educational Research and Development.

“Why does this matter to pediatricians?” he asked. “Reading we know is a major public health concern. It is considered a social determinant of health.”

First, some background

Human brains are born ready to do certain things, such as see and speak.

“But out of the box, there’s not an actual network in the brain that automatically knows how to read. We have to make it,” Hutton said.

Human beings do this by using brain networks that evolved for other things. So, as parents talk and sing with babies, their language networks are stimulated.

“This tends to happen in a predictable sequence,” Hutton said. As parents show picture books to babies and toddlers, other brain networks are engaged – vision, attention and executive function, for example.

“All these areas need to be stimulated during early childhood. The more you stimulate them, the more they form networks to work together. The more you stimulate them, the stronger they get.

“If all that goes well, that’s how this emerging literacy process is fueled,” he said.

Long before the ABCs

Emerging literacy is a collection of skills – how to read, background knowledge, and attitude, Hutton said.

The how-to includes how a book works.

Turning pages. We read from left to right. Children learn these details years before it is time to learn ABCs or to sound out words.

As children listen to books, look at pictures and converse with others, they build up a store of words and ideas. Later, when it is time to “learn to read,” children draw on those words, matching them to words they are learning to decode in school.

Children who hear and learn fewer words during their first four years do not read as easily as children with more words.

And then there is attitude.

“This is the underrated part,” Hutton said. “Do I like to read? Did I grow up in a home that valued reading? Is reading fun? Or is reading more of a chore?

“That’s one of the challenges we have, to really reinforce the idea that reading is something that should be seen as a fun and nurturing and positive thing, not just something that is all about how you are going to do on the test later.”

The brain, on books

Earlier surveys counting books and reading time, for example, showed that children who spent more time with books from an early age had better readings skills and scores. But could you observe a physiological difference?

Hutton and colleagues did MRI scans on healthy preschoolers. They scanned brains while children listened to stories, and again when they heard random noises.

“What we found was there was a difference,” he said. In children who had been read to more, there was more activity, including in the part of the brain associated with vision. Doctors think that is the child’s imagination.

“It’s pretty amazing,” he said. “Kids who have more practice, more experience with books and reading, have more ability to activate the part of the brain that’s involved in imagining what’s going on in the story and then understanding what it means.”

“This is pretty exciting. It’s really the first study to show reading early on makes a difference in how their brains function,” he said.

Quality counts

So, the number and frequency of books is important. What about quality of the experience?

Hutton’s team watched parents read to children and scored the range of their behaviors. Some read in a monotone. Some made sound effects and involved children. One even looked at a phone while reading.

They scanned children’s brains and found that children of parents who read more interactively, where children had turns at talking about the story, had more activity in both the back and front of the brain. These areas are associated with imagination, chronology, expressive language, and understanding emotions.

Parents, teachers and doctors have long observed that kids who interact more with stories have stronger language skills. Hutton’s research corroborates that observation.

“More interactive reading experience leads to stronger activation in the part of the brain that’s involved in knowing how to talk,” he said. “And also integrating what they hear in the story with how they feel about it.

“It really is a pretty powerful parallel with what behavioral research has shown in terms of the benefits of interactive reading.”

Lost in a good book

Was there a difference in the brains of children who were visibly engrossed in a book compared to those who weren’t?

Yes.

Kids who showed greater interest in the story had more activation in the cerebellum, a rear section associated with helping the whole brain learn new things.

“We call it a storytime turbocharger for learning,” Hutton said. Children who were most interested were probably more likely to be learning something. He could see their brains doing it.

“We should be coaching families to get kids involved in the story, sharing the process, to talk about it, to ask questions,” he said.

Goldilocks effect

Then they looked at brains receiving stories in different formats – audio only, an animated story app, and a traditional picture book. They evaluated how much the different parts of the brain were working together.

Small children who listened to audio only without pictures had much less network activity. There were no pictures to help with unfamiliar words.

“Too cold,” Hutton said.

When children looked at the same story animated, there was a lot of activity associated with visual processing, but little else.

“All the sudden the networks stopped talking to each other. “When animation happens, there is a 37 percent drop-off in cooperation between these networks. The imagination part is less needed, so there is more focus on the visual processing part.

“When you animate a story, it short circuits the child’s imagination.”

“Too hot,” Hutton said.

The old-fashioned picture book?

“When you put pictures with the audio, there is greater cooperation among parts of brain,” he said.

“It was just right.”

But wait, there’s more

“Books are also a way to learn about feelings,” Hutton said.

“It’s a way to really exchange emotions with a child, from promoting early experiences of nurturing and feeling cared for to relating to what characters in books are feeling.

“This is how kids learn a lot of these feelings. They are able to put themselves into the minds of other characters.”

Social and emotional maturity is also a predictor of school success. Learning to think about the world from another’s point of view helps.

“All those things involve practice, and they start early,” Hutton said.

“That’s another real benefit of reading with a child. You’re not only building their vocabulary but also their ability to process their feelings and to put themselves in other people’s shoes. I think that’s another benefit that may be underrecognized.”

NAEP scores

Shortly after Hutton’s visit, the National Assessment of Educational Progress released its 2019 scores. West Virginia fourth graders dropped four points in reading to 213 on the 500-point scale. The national average is 240. No one was surprised.

Read Aloud West Virginia sees three main reasons. Poverty interferes with children’s learning and exacerbates other problems, and West Virginia children are disproportionately poor. Opioid addiction has killed parents and destroyed families, further harming children and their ability to learn. And then there is screen time.

In another study, Hutton said, most parents were reading to their infants frequently, and 34 percent read once or twice a week.

But at two months, 68 percent of babies were watching TV regularly, and TV time turned into hours, not minutes.

Read Aloud 15 Minutes surveyed parents and found that reading to children every day dropped between 2018 and 2016, with the biggest drops among kids ages 6 to 8.

“I would argue that kids at this age still need to be read to,” Hutton said. “Even if they can read, the content of the book leads to lots of questions, lots of things the parent can really talk to them about.”

West Virginia teachers have been telling Read Aloud that they are seeing more language delays among children entering school in recent years.

The state Department of Education reports 2,122 children had an identified developmental delay in 2018, up 9 percent from 1,946 children in 2013.

‘Neurons that fire together wire together.’

Then in November, Dr. Hutton’s latest research appeared in the journal JAMAPediatrics.

He studied preschoolers who were exposed to more digital media than the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends. Those guidelines include no digital media before age 2 except for video chatting and no more than an hour of high-quality children’s programming a day for ages 2 to 5.

This time, scans showed brains exposed to more screen time were associated with less of the desirable fat coating of nerve cell connectors – a process called myelinization. Myelin is what makes the brain’s white matter white. It insulates nerve cells and makes them more efficient at signalling each other, like the insulation on electrical wires.

There is an old adage in neuroscience, Dr. Hutton said: “Neurons that fire together wire together.”

“The more these areas are encouraged to talk to one another, whether language areas or executive function, the more that coating of the wires is stimulated,” Dr. Hutton told the New York Times. “The amount of myelin around a nerve fiber is directly related to how often it’s stimulated, how often it’s used.”

Possibly, he said, kids with more screen time have less myelinization of networks important for language and literacy because the screens crowd out other things that are shown to stimulate healthy brain development.

Back in Huntington, Hutton told doctors and educators that the number of books, the frequency, the quality of reading and the format are all important to children’s brain development.

“I would interpret this as saying you need books, you need to read them pretty often, read them interactively, and as boring as possible in terms of the format. Boring being straight up picture books.

“I really would argue there’s not a better invention. We haven’t invented a better mousetrap at that age if we want to stimulate brain networks to develop in the most strong and functional way.”

2018-03

‘Find the right book’ at the WV Book Festival, Oct. 4-5

Looking for your next favorite book? The West Virginia Book Festival’s got you covered. With a used book sale, writing workshops, and a line-up of authors including James Patterson, Salina Yoon, Orson Scott Card, and more, this gathering of readers and writers will have something for the whole family.

Orson Scott Card
James Patterson

Read Aloud is particularly excited about the opportunity for cross-generational interest in authors. Headliner James Patterson, for example, a well-known adult author, also has several successful young adult (YA) series, including Maximum Ride, Middle School, and I Funny. Orson Scott Card, author of the popular sci-fi novel, Ender’s Game, also has a YA series called Pathfinder. This is a great opportunity for parents to foster and/or bolster a love of reading with their children through the shared experience of meeting or discovering an author they both enjoy.

James Patterson claims to have set a mission with his writing career that we heartily agree with – “to prove that there is no such thing as a person who ‘doesn’t like to read,’ only people who haven’t found the right book.” We hope to see this message resonate through all aspects of this year’s book festival and awaken the reader in everyone.

Join us on October 4-5 at the Charleston Coliseum & Convention Center to celebrate our favorite thing – books!