The African American Children’s Book Fair goes virtual this year

For 28 years, the African American Children’s Book Fair has been a tradition for families seeking hard-to-find Black children’s literature. More than a tradition — an institution, and a jovial, voracious, elbow-to-elbow ritual.

Over three hours, authors and illustrators stand or sit behind tables along one edge of the room, signing books and leaning over to answer kids’ questions, stepping away only to head to the back of the room to read their stories (in a way only the stories’ creators can), to a rapt audience of kids seated on the floor.

“It’s an event,” said Caldecott-winning author and illustrator Jerry Pinkney, drawing out the word “event.” “For three hours, the energy and the sense of celebration and joy is infectious,” he said.

This year, the 29th annual event goes virtual, with five hours of kid-friendly panel sessions — some live, most recorded — that bring in 34 authors and illustrators to talk with librarians, educators, and journalists about the history, artistry, culture, joy, fantasy, social justice, family, and love to be found in Black children’s books.

Many faces on the Zoom will be familiar to book fair regulars: author Pamela Tuck and illustrator Floyd Cooper on history, author Tami Charles and illustrator Gordon James on artistry, illustrator Eric Velasquez on culture, author Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrator E.B. Lewis on love.

Beyond the panels, the guests will also interact live in breakout rooms on the fair’s website for an audience of registered guests. (Registration is free, and the event will also be viewable on Facebook Live.)

The arrangements address the dilemma now facing all COVID-era virtual event producers who are accustomed to producing in-person happenings, says fair founder and organizer Vanesse Lloyd-Sgambati. “How do you keep people looking at a computer screen?”

The panel dedicated to family might be most recognizable, locally, featuring members of prolific, Philadelphia-rooted Pinkney family: patriarchs Jerry and Gloria Jean, children Andrea Davis and Brian, and granddaughter Charnelle Pinkney Barlow, whose first book, Just Like Mama, has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award.

According to Jerry Pinkney, their Zoom has the energy and familiarity of a reunion.

“Our family sharing is very natural. We’re talking and answering questions, and we’re responding to each other because we know each other so well,” he said. “There’s a richness there that you wouldn’t have on a panel with just other authors and illustrators.”

In recent years, the live book fair has been packing 4,000 people into the all-purpose room of the Community College of Philadelphia and selling “more books in three hours than any other African American retailer in the country,” Lloyd-Sgambati says. This year’s attendees are being directed to bookshop.org to make their purchases.

One treasured attraction has been the free books that are given away at the start event, and later this month the fair will bring authors into remote classrooms across Philadelphia and provide one copy of the visiting author’s book for each student in the Zoom room.

While it’s disappointing not to convene elbow-to-elbow at CCP, there’s a considerable plus side to being virtual, said bestselling author Andrea Davis Pinkney (Jerry’s daughter-in-law). “We are welcoming readers from across the globe into our family, into our children’s literature family.”

African American Children’s Book Fair, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 6, free, registration required, online at theafricanamericanchildrensbookproject.org.