Avid young adult readers and distinguished authors all gathered up and down sunny street plazas buzzing in excited chatter about wizards, vampires and futuristic dystopian worlds.
For the first time in school history, from Nov. 13-14, 28 students and three faculty members travelled up to Charleston, NC for the fifth annual YALL Fest, a young adult literature festival. YALL Fest is a gathering of authors and book enthusiasts who were looking forward to meeting their idols. Even though the genre is titled “young adult literature,” many adults are also intrigued by these books.
“I had learned about the festival last year,” Librarian Reba Gordon said. “Mrs. Parker had gone with Mrs. Ela and raved about it, and I desperately wanted to go. It was a natural progression that we would be going this year, and we wanted to give kids the opportunity to go as well.”
English teacher Georgia Parker took students from grades eight through 11 for the opportunity to meet their favorite authors and to escape to a realm of creativity for a weekend.
The first day started off with the YALL Crawl, an event in which 17 authors were signing their books in various locations within a two block radius of the Blue Bicycle Book Shop, which was the sponsor of the event.
“Veronica Roth was in an ice cream shop, Danielle Paige and E. Lockhart were in another little shop together signing, and Victoria Aveyard, who wrote The Red Queen, was in the toy store,” Parker said.
Students could go into these various shops for a meet-and-greet style interaction with the authors.
“It’s like a rock concert but all authors,” Gordon said. “I’ve seen kids react the way they probably would if they were meeting a musician.”
Interestingly enough, the man who owns the Blue Bicycle Book Shop came to Trinity seven years ago as a visiting writer. Jonathan Sanchez came and spoke to some of the students and at the time, he was currently in the writing process of his latest book. That same book, which he was working on, is now about to be published.
“I told him ‘You’ll have to come back after the book is published,’ and he said ‘that’d be great!’” Parker said.
Throughout the day Saturday, there were about 6,000 guests in attendance. Authors ran panels which were moderated by R.L. Stein, author of the Goosebumps series, Richelle Meade, author of The Vampire Academy and Kami Garcia, author of Beautiful Creatures as well as more signing opportunities.
“We got to hear them speak [and] there’s back-to-back panels that you can go to where the authors are talking about their writing process or being published,” Parker said. “I think one of the hardest things is choosing between ‘Do I want to go hear Veronica Roth speak or do I want to get Kiera Cass’s autograph?’”
Books Go Hollywood was one of the more popular panels at the convention. There, authors discussed what it was like to have their books made into movies on the big screen.
“Some of the authors had a great experience having their book being made into a movie and others said it was the worst year of their life,” Parker said. “They didn’t feel like the producers were true to the heart of their story, and it was really painful to watch their story changed and torn apart.”
Daniel Handler, better known as Lemony Snicket, author of A Series of Unfortunate Events, was part of the Books Go Hollywood panel. He told a story about the time he was standing in an elevator with the actress playing one of the Baudelaire orphans in the movie just before they were about to go on the red carpet. She said to him, “you know, I’m really scared,” but Handler said that there was no reason to be scared.
“He said as soon as the elevator doors opened, he was taken one direction, she was taken another, and people were in her face yelling,” Parker said. “He said he felt horrible and that he wishes he could rewind and say ‘I’m really scared too, but it’ll be ok.”
Handler then went on to say that he felt like he really let her down because he had no idea that the atmosphere would be that intense . He was really bothered by the paparazzi and the way they treated this young girl simply because she was in a movie. Handler really touched on the pros and cons about what it was like to go from the behind the scenes aspect that was the writing and out into the public eye as his work was made into a film adaptation.
Part of the reason why the school decided to bring students this year was to help them grow as writers, making the stories come more to life, as well as showing them how successful people can still remain humble even in the midst of all the money and fame.
YALL Fest was a huge bonding experience for the students, and they gained more independence from being away from home for a weekend.
“It’s good to bond with fellow classmates–people who you wouldn’t normally meet from different grades,” Mrs. Gordon said.
Apart from the bonding experiences, YALL Fest also helped foster students’ passion for reading for fun and not just for school assignments.
“Every single study that I have read has solid evidence that reading for pleasure increases academic excellence, success later in life, general intelligence,” Gordon said. “I think it is very important for kids to read for pleasure, and it’s fun.”
