By LEAH WANKUM and SARA LAWSON
Muleskinner Staff

(WARRENSBURG, Mo., digitalBURG) — The university’s Children’s Literature Festival draws thousands to campus, including adults who visited as children decades ago.

“Even now, I’m getting phone calls on a daily basis from grandmothers who are bringing their kids,” said Maya Kucij, the new director of the three-day festival. “The festival kind of offers them a perfect way to bring them back and have something that is geared toward kids but is happening as a part of their life history.”

School districts across Missouri and Kansas are bringing busloads of kids to campus for the 48th annual festival, which is scheduled for March 20-22. Kucij said the festival staff expects around 4,000 children in grades 3-10 to attend.

The festival will begin with a luncheon at 12:30 p.m. Sunday, March 20, in the Elliott Student Union. Susan Campbell Bartoletti, award-winning author of “Terrible Typhoid Mary: A True Story of the Deadliest Cook in America,” is this year’s guest speaker for the luncheon. Authors will then be available to sign books from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the Elliott Student Union atrium.

Author presentations will be going on Monday, March 21, and Tuesday, March 22, throughout campus with book sales from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Elliott Student Union ballroom. Kucij said 33 authors are participating in the festival this year. Anyone is invited to sign up for Sunday’s luncheon and engage with authors. Registration closes Friday, March 11.

From Washington State to New York City, Kucij said the visiting authors will be coming from all over the country.

“(The authors) are very different,” she said. “Sometimes, we have illustrators who come in and they do illustrations right there in front of the kids. Some of them come in with PowerPoint presentations, and some of them talk more about the craft of writing and their editing processes. Some of them talk more about how they became writers.”

The presentations are flexible so that writers can express themselves and their work to the children in a variety of ways.

“We leave it up to the authors,” Kucij said. “A lot of these are authors who have been coming to this festival for a while. Sometimes it will be their first year, some 25 years, 18 years. There is a different historical relationship that we have with some of these people. So it really varies. Some of them are more interactive, but they are all great presenters.”

Kucij said the festival is special because it’s oftentimes the first time a youth has visited a university campus.

“That alone is kind of an exciting thing for some kids to go to an university and attend something there that is happening for kids their age,” she said.

The festival is also a way to introduce some of the older students to UCM, since some of the high school sophomores may already be thinking about college.

Kucij said there is a kind of magic of meeting an author of a book you’ve read or studied in school. Children who attend the festival often come prepared with questions and want to know specifics about the books they’ve read.

“So that kind of magic of seeing that it’s a real person who writes a book, it’s kind of when you are in elementary school and you go to the grocery store and you see your teacher,” she said. “It’s sort of mind-blowing… it takes you aback.”

Kucij said it’s important for children to meet writers and artists because it makes creativity become reality.

“They think, ‘Oh, this is something that people do. People create books,’” she said. “With the emphasis on literacy and how important that is for lifelong learning – that kind of experience is really important.”

Although the festival is scheduled during the university’s spring break, it had no trouble finding volunteers. Kucij said the festival staff expects almost 150 people from UCM and the local high school to help out during the festival.

For more information about the Children’s Literature Festival, visit clf.ucmo.edu. To register for the festival luncheon Sunday, March 20, email Maya Kucij at clfreg@ucmo.edu.