BOOKWORM FEST CELEBRATES THE PICTURE BOOK
Event gives children opportunity to speak with authors, illustrators
Adam Rex was at the park when he got the idea for his latest book.
There on an electrical shed, he spotted a big white sign that said “OX” — a warning sign that indicates an oxidizer is present, posing a fire risk.
But Rex, the author and illustrator of books for children, wasn’t thinking about oxidizers.
“It was the word ‘ox,’ suddenly presented to me in an unfamiliar context,” he said. That capitalized OX made him realize that “ox” is a palindrome. Read one way, it’s a lumbering animal; read backward, it’s “XO,” the kisses-and-hugs abbreviation used to sign love letters.
“That, for some reason, made me say, ‘Oh…I should write an epistolary love story between an ox and a gazelle.’
Thus, “XO, OX: A Love Story,” written by Rex and illustrated by Scott Campbell, an utterly charming series of letters between a gorgeous gazelle and a hapless, hopeful ox.
Rex will be in Houston Saturday to talk to kids about stories and art, oxen and inspiration. He’s the keynote speaker at the Bookworm Festival, which will bring children and children’s authors together at Spring Oaks Middle School.
The two-hour event will give kids the chance to hear some stories and ask questions of several children’s authors. Besides Rex, this year’s Bookworm will feature sessions with Mary Sullivan (“Treat”), Adam
Lehrhaupt (“I Will Not Eat You,”), Varsha Bajaj (“This is Our Baby, Born Today”) and Heidi Schulz (“Giraffes Ruin Everything”).
“There’s something magical about kids meeting and talking to authors and listening to their stories,” said Melanie Scales, a school librarian and the festival’s chair. Since the first annual festival in 2014, she’s seen children wait in long lines to speak to authors or get a book signed. “People think that kids are losing interest in reading and in books, and these kinds of events make me realize that they’re really not.”
Rex wrote and illustrated the best-seller “Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich,” a collection of poems about the secret lives of famous monsters. His book “The True Meaning of Smekday” was turned into the 2015 movie “Home,” starring Jim Parsons and Rihanna. And he has illustrated books for other authors, including Neil Gaiman’s series about a sneezing panda named Chu.
Rex said he likes to “demystify” writing when he talks to kids. “I did not come out fully formed as an author/illustrator,” he said; first, he was just a kid who was good at drawing.
A lot of kids stop drawing or spinning stories by the time they are 10 or 12, Rex said. “They have doubts,” he said, and decide they’re not creative.
“They think they’re supposed to know how to do it already,” he said. “I try to make sure they leave knowing that no one knows what they’re doing. We’re all completely adrift and making it up as we go along.”
Some Bookworm Festival authors write for children who haven’t learned to read; others write books designed for 6- and 7-year-olds — or older. “We’ve even had third- and fourth-graders come, too,” Scales said. “Picture books are kind of universal.”
That’s what Rex believes, too.
“Everybody, at every level, deserves art made for them,” he said. “There are plenty of books out there that are just meant to instruct, or to teach reading. But picture books are supposed to make kids feel more than they understand, and to be this gateway into art
that they share with their parents.”
In fact, Rex gets frustrated when he overhears parents bragging that their 6-year-old doesn’t read picture books anymore.
“Why not?” he says. “How is that something
you’re supposed to age out of? A short story with compelling language, told with beautiful pictures — that’s something we ought to be able to enjoy for the rest of our lives.”