The LOC.GOV Wise Guide : Read All About It!

Visit the National Book Festival Web site for 2005 and you can read all about this national celebration of American creativity that will be held on the National Mall this Sept. 24.

2005 National Book Festival poster by Jerry Pinkney

Visitors on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for the National Book Festival, with the U.S. Capitol in the background

This is the fifth annual festival, which each year has drawn increasingly larger crowds to see and hear favorite authors and to take part in other activities that recognize the importance of books and reading.

Join the fun with 80 authors, poets and illustrators who will speak and sign books. This year's Festival includes National Book Award winners E.L. Doctorow and John Irving; best-selling author Sandra Brown; Rupert Holmes, the versatile Tony and Edgar award winner who also penned "The Pina Colada Song"; Tom Wolfe, whose most recent novel is "I Am Charlotte Simmons"; designer and television personality Chris Madden; eminent historian David McCullough, author of the recent "1776"; and young people's author Walter Dean Myers.

If you can't come to Washington, you can get great ideas on how to "Celebrate Reading in Your Community." Other links will take you to past festivals, where you can listen to more than 200 author presentations.

A. Jerry Pinkney, artist. 2005 National Book Festival Poster. Reproduction information: Not available for reproduction.

B. John Harrington, photographer. [Visitors on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for the National Book Festival, with the U.S. Capitol in the background], October 9, 2004. Reproduction information: Not available for reproduction.