BYU and the Provo Library announced that the annual Books for Young Readers Symposium will begin July 16 with a special exhibit entitled “Golden Legacy,” featuring original illustrations from the Little Golden Books.
This exhibit will host 57 masterpieces of some of the most well-known Little Golden Books. “The Great Big Fire Engine” and “The Poky Little Puppy” will come to life as viewers have a special chance to look before the exhibit is open to the public.
BYU graduate Shellie Wagner Dean said she and her husband grew up reading the Little Golden Books. She remembers reading “The Poky Little Puppy” and “The Animals of Farmer Jones.” “My husband always read ‘Mister Dog’ when he was little and still quotes parts of it sometimes,” she said.
Now they have shared that love with their children. “My parents sent a compilation to my kids as an Easter gift with a note saying that they used to read some of the same stories to me when I was little,” Dean said.
Her kids love the stores, and as her 3-year-old son Sammy said, “It has all the things I like. It has animals, and cars, and a polite elephant.” Sammy then went on to look at every page in the book and say which ones he liked — which happened to be all of them.
Chris Crowe, the assistant chair of the committee, said the symposium, with its focus on fiction, goes back almost 30 years. It began at University of Utah and then came to BYU.
Since Crowe got involved in 1993, the format of the symposium has remained the same: six renowned authors and illustrators each speak for an hour and conclude with a question-and-answer session. The speakers this year will include Jon Klassen, Gene Luen Yang, Clare Vanderpool, Marilyn Singer, Sara Zarr and Leonard S. Marcus.
Emilee Barrett, Books for Young Readers Symposium organizer, said in a press release, “It’s rare to get this many authors — six award winners — together at one conference. It’s not a huge conference, and anyone who loves children’s literature will enjoy the opportunity to get to know these wonderful authors.”
Crowe said his favorite part is “meeting the talented authors and illustrators.”
“It is fun to hear them speak. … It is kind of a window into their creative process, and every writer is different, so every summer it’s kind of a new opportunity to learn how people put books together,” Crowe said.
Ticket prices and registration information can be found at the Books for Young Readers Website.
