Festival of Books

This weekend is the annual Festival of Books at the U of A campus. There are vendors, authors, stories and activities and loads and loads of books.

The campus is a good drive from our house which elicited small grumblings from my young backseat passenger, but the real problem was finding parking. Oh goodness gracious me. After searching packed streets and packed parking lots for fifteen minutes the boy was ready to give it up and go home. We're never going to see the book festival, said he. I finally found a spot just a couple of blocks away, but to hear the boy complaining you would think we had been trudging across the scorching desert for days.

Nicco didn't know what to expect (neither did I, truth be told) which was good...no expectations means they can't not be met. We saw the llama from either Is Your Mama a Llama or Llama, Llama Pink Pajama and Lyle the Crocodile and Biscuit as we walked the grounds. Nicco was a bit intimidated by the big characters, but I convinced him to take a picture with Biscuit by telling him that Mrs. Cornwell wanted to see pictures of the kids with the characters they met. Anything for Mrs. Cornwell!

Nicco listened to a story while I stood in line for him to get his Stink-O-Pedia book signed by Megan McDonald, the author of the Judy and Stink Moody books. He said very timidly, "I love Stink." She thanked him and signed his book, "Stink it up, Nicco!" He saw Mrs. Cornwell while we were in the check out line buying his book. He said, "I didn't know my teacher would be here! Is this like a school?" You know how it is when you see your teachers out of context.

We walked around the booths, desperately looking for Pete the Cat. We stopped and made a story out of stamps, looked at some optical illusions, spun a prize wheel, got a couple free books (yay!) and listened to some stories from the Japanese countryside. Nicco was disappointed that he didn't see Pete the Cat anywhere and wanted to go home a half hour before the Literary Circus was due to start. He did have expectations for the circus, and I was very afraid they would not be met. There could be many interpretations for a literary circus. Literary, after all, is not the same as literal. The book fest itself could accurately be described as a literary circus.

I was relieved when we reached the circus pavilion and saw poles and flags and ropes and wires. That was an indication of some kind of circus-like performance. It turned out to be an acrobat show, which was lots of fun for my small boy and met his expectations. They got away with calling it a literary circus by having a kid in a Pinocchio costume and making random minor references to the Pinocchio story.

This is "Gerhardt the Great" as Geppedo. You remember the part where Geppedo was dangling and swinging from ropes, right? Gerhardt was quite strong, very flexible, and extremely gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

This is a Roman Ladder. That's the Blue Fairy at the top.

You also remember the part where Pinocchio trained a pink elephant, I'm sure.

Nicco was impressed and happy, and that is what counts. He wants to come back tomorrow to see the circus interpretation of Peter Pan. Somehow, I think it will be exactly the same program with costume changes. Maybe the Blue Fairy will dress as Tinkerbell.

When the circus was done, we found hot dogs for lunch and walked miles and miles and miles back to the car, twirling a Japanese country-girl parasol. Whatever. Again, the kid was happy, therefore, I was happy.