Danny Birt, doing his heroic thing
My family and I really enjoyed attending MystiCon in Roanoke, Virginia this past weekend. It’s very gratifying to me to be able to say this, considering that the volunteer who was scheduled to run most of the children’s activities track got sick prior to the con, and those activities had to be canceled. Even so, my kids were very welcome in the dealers’ room, the con hospitality suite, and (most important to them) the video gaming room, which featured various games and gaming consoles going all the way back to the 1980s.
In fact, my best memory of the con, apart from two terrific (but sparsely attended) panels on Sunday, is of the Saturday night children’s story hour in front of the hotel’s fireplace in the lobby. Alethea Kontis and Deborah Smith Ford read from their picture books to a very appreciative audience of about eight children (three of whom were my boys), who sat on pillows in front of the fire and were quite vocal with their reactions and questions. After the story telling was over, a kind (and incredibly patient) con organizer wandered over with a beginners’ level fantasy board game and taught the kids how to play. Even my five-year-old, Judah, caught on and was very engaged in playing. Asher, my seven-year-old, got a little too overly enthusiastic on a couple of occasions and knocked over the playing pieces, but the man organizing the game took this in his stride (which is more than I could’ve accomplished – after the second mishap, I would’ve exiled Asher to the far side of the lobby).
Writer/actress/teacher Deborah Smith Ford
I remarked to another parent (who, like me, enjoyed being able to lean back and watch other adults entertain and educate our kids), “There’s the future of fandom, right there, sitting on those pillows. If we can do a good enough job of showing the kids a good time at conventions, making cons events the kids want to go back to again and again, then we can be reasonably assured that we’ll still have conventions to go to thirty years from now.”
A number of conventions that I’ve attended in the past few years have catered to the needs and interests of young children. I think this is a marvelous and healthy development. As a parent, I really enjoy being able to take my kids with me to conventions and knowing they won’t be bored out of their minds (and constantly bugging me to entertain them). As a writer for multiple age groups, I appreciate that so many folks are making a concentrated effort to make reading a fun activity and offer science fiction and fantasy books as desirable acquisitions for young people (who, we all hope, will grow from young readers to teen readers to adult readers). As a fan, I’m gratified (and relieved) that fandom appears to be making a good effort to avoid becoming extinct (by pushing back against what has been called “the graying of fandom” – not that there’s anything at all wrong with senior citizen fans, many of whom I love to death and who provide much of the best audience participation at panel discussions, but conventions need to have a good mix of ages involved if they are to survive).
For those of you who may be looking for great new (or old) books for your kids, or who just like children’s books, here are some of the wonderful books my boys and I were exposed to at MystiCon.
Alethea Kontis is an absolute natural when it comes to interacting with children. Kids just gravitate toward her (adults, too, for that matter; warmth and genuineness count for a lot). She sold out of her first picture book, Alphabet Oops! prior to the story hour. So she read from her second picture book, Alphabet Oops! H is for Halloween, which, given my boys’ enjoyment of monster movies and all things monster-related, I think would’ve been a good choice in any case. Her book is chock-full of charming illustrations (including hidden characters on each page which young readers are encouraged to find), and her story of the various letters of the alphabet all competing to stand for various symbols of Halloween certainly kept my kids’ attention. Any parent looking for a picture book for a young child who likes monsters can’t go wrong with this one.
MystiCon was the first time I had the pleasure of meeting Deborah Smith Ford, an actress, teacher, and writer from Florida. Things got a bit chaotic in the hotel lobby midway through the children’s story hour (not due to the kids, but to a bunch of adults who congregated there and were oblivious to the authors trying to read to little ears). But Levi, my oldest, wanted very much to hear Deborah’s book, so she very obligingly gave him a one-on-one reading of her picture book, The Little Apple, which is about her own upbringing on a farm. Levi and Deborah hit it off so well that she made him a present of her book, which came with an audio CD that features songs by sound-alikes of Johnny and June Cash. We haven’t had a chance yet to listen to the audio CD, but I’m looking forward to it (especially given that I’m a fan of the Cashes’ music).
Danny Birt is a fellow Loyola University of New Orleans grad and an all-around good guy. His book, Between a Roc and a Hard Place, is a chapter book aimed at middle school readers. I’ve heard him read excerpts from his tale of a baby dragon and enjoyed what I heard very much. Very charming and sweet. So I had my oldest son, Levi, aged 8, look at the book to see if it is something he can read and would be interested in. Affirmative on both questions! Danny very kindly inscribed a copy for him.
The proprietor of Oreilis Books, a used books shop that operates online and at conventions, is very interested in catering to the reading needs of young readers. I discovered to my delight that she had a copy of Evelyn Sibley Lampman’s 1955 classic children’s chapter book, The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek. Another parent was considering buying it for his seven-year-old son, but that kid ended up picking out another couple of books, so I snatched up the Lampman as soon as he put it down.
I’ve never read The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek, but when I was about Levi’s age, my mom bought me a copy of the sequel, The Shy Stegosaurus of Indian Springs, which I remember simply loving and reading over and over again. (The shy stegosaurus of the title, George, was always apologizing to his young human friends for the very small size of his brain and his limited intellect; he was an endearing character.) I thought I’d kept my old hardback copy, and not too long ago I went looking for it, hoping to give it to Levi. However, in one of my many moves over the years, I either gave it away or lost it (although I managed to hang onto some of my other favorite books from childhood, including J. B. Priestley’s Snoggle a precursor of Steven Spielberg’s E.T., and my collection of Alfred Hitchcock’s oversized anthologies for young people). So I was thrilled to find a copy of the first book to give to Levi and his younger brothers (I’ll bet Judah, the dinosaur and Japanese monster fan, will be the book’s biggest enthusiast in our household). The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek has been reprinted fairly recently by Purple House Press, so it shouldn’t be that hard to find, if you know a little dinosaur-lover who needs a wonderful chapter book to read.
