Telling Tales

That's right, I attended 2 festivals in one weekend.  I'm just that kind of crazy town.  Yesterday, my children and I headed to Westfield Heritage Village in Rockton, Ontario for Telling Tales, the festival that makes me miss the Eden Mills Writers' Festival every year.  Honestly who schedules two literary events on the same day?  Telling Tales wins because it's closer, free, and has more stuff for the kiddies. Sorry Eden Mills.  Change your dates!

Even though I love Telling Tales, I do have some suggestions for improvement. First of all the schedule is insane.  There's zero time between talks that cater to the same age group and in some cases the two talks are several buildings away.  And in between there are trains and chickens that you can pet and a black smith and historical and literary characters.  As a result, we only managed to catch two talks in their entirety.  Those would be Ted Staunton and Ruth Ohi.  I thoroughly enjoyed their fabulous high energy presentations.  Ted sang about chickens and Ruth drew us pictures based on children's scribbles.  Both were enthusiastic and entertaining readers.

If you enjoy the talk you can purchase books at the book sellers tent way back at the entrance.  The authors go there to sign for about fifteen minutes after their talk.  This means you can't get your book autographed and also watch the next author's talk.  I did get two of Ruth Ohi's Chicken, Pig, Cow books signed (to William and Jadzia, so I can pretend they are for them).

So here's what I propose.  There should be at least a fifteen minute buffer zone between talks.  In addition to the main bookseller's tent, there should be a small selling table set up at each venue that features books by the authors presenting at that location, so you can buy and get your book autographed right then and there. Then you can have a little time to travel between venues, or get kettle corn, or pet chickens, or whatever. Simple right?  I'm going to write them a letter suggesting it.

My other suggestion: trays for the food sellers.  Children cannot carry their own grilled cheese without dropping it.

Telling Tales

My mother (Sylvia McNicoll author of such hits as Bringing Up Beauty, Walking a Thin Line and Last Chance for Paris) was one of the talented writers presenting at the Telling Tales festival in Westfield Village. The kids missed their nap to watch the show, so I'm not sure how good of an audience we were. William ran around screaming on a fatigue-induced high, but was fairly well-behaved otherwise. Jadzia kept squawking, until I put her on the ground, then tried to escape.

The only other presenter we saw is an illustrator named Ruth Ohi, who I'm a pretty big fan of because she wrote Chicken, Pig and Cow, one of my favourite (er, I mean WILLIAM's favourite) picture books. I meant to buy her new book Chicken, Pig and Cow on the Move, so I could get it autographed, but I got distracted and didn't.

We also took in a puppet show, played with a parachute, did a craft, chatted up some olden days people, and petted some farm animals. The geese were gigantic. One of the sheep was named William.