Featured Authors

The honored authors and illustrators who take the time to attend these Children's Literature Festivals is the reason why such an event is hosted at all. Several decades of about ten guest authors per year have passed by, but to summarize what it may have been like meeting them and to see why many of them choose to do what they do, just ten across the timeline can be browsed below.

There are many book covers on display here as well as on the subsequent authors' pages. Each of them is a signed book kept safe in Pickler Memorial Library's Special Collections. The entire collection includes not only works from these ten authors, but dozens of other contributors to children's literature who have attended the Children's Literature Festival.

Peter Cohen pamphlet horse illustration only

Peter Z. Cohen

Attended 1983

Arnold Adoff

Attended 1988

Arnold Adoff poster running rabbits illustration only
Where Do You Get Your Ideas? by Sandy Asher

Sandy Asher

Attended 1983 and 1991

Dean Hughes

Attended 1986, 1989, and 1995

Angel Park All-Stars: What a Catch! by Dean Hughes
The Loyal Cat by Lensey Namioka

Lensey Namioka

Attended 1998

Jane Kurtz

Attended 2002, 2010, and 2015

The Storyteller's Beads by Jane Kurtz
The Teachers from the Black Lagoon by Mike Thaler

Mike Thaler

Attended 2009

Mary Downing Hahn

Attended 1989 and 2012

The Time of the Witch by Mary Downing Hahn
Gaby, Lost and Found by Angela Cervantes

Angela Cervantes

Attended 2016

Hena Khan

Attended 2019

Amina's Voice by Hena Khan