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IT WAS ALMOST like being a college student again - with rap sessions late into the night and a mad dash to classes the next morning - but there the similarity ended.
Our group of 40 visiting authors were the teachers this time, and most of the students were under five feet tall. Almost 4,000 fourth to eighth graders swarmed out of yellow buses and poured into the halls and classrooms at Central Missouri State University, in Warrensburg. Bright-eyed and attentive, they listened to some of their favorite authors speak, voiced a surprisingly broad variety of questions and asked for autographs on everything from books and pads and posters to rumpled sheets of paper. It was exhilarating for those of us who usually spend solitary days tapping away at the typewriter or staring at a computer screen.
The occasion was the Twentieth Annual Children's Literature Festival, April 15-16, which attracted children's book authors from across the country and featured such eminent, award-winning writers as Zilpha Keatley Snyder and Ouida Sebestyen.
At a dinner for the participating adults, Snyder prefaced her sensitive comments with an anecdote no one else could match. She said she was feeling much better than she had felt at a previous affair. On that other evening she had grabbed a gelatin capsule from her suitcase before dashing off to the banquet. After...