(upbeat music) (graphic pops) - Hello and welcome to The Journal.

I'm Steve Kendall.

The Northwest Ohio Teen Book Festival is a volunteer organization that creates an event that allows for northwest Ohio teens and tweens to meet their favorite authors, discover new authors.

And joining us are Denise Phillips and Amanda McGuire Rzicznek from the Northwest Ohio Teen Book Festival.

So Denise, tell us about the festival.

Kind of give us the background, maybe a little bit of history, and then we'll start talking about what's going to go on on March 15th, this year's festival.

- Yeah.

So this is our fourth year of hosting the festival.

And so every year we make little improvements to make it even more exciting.

But the goal is to have an event where teen readers can come out, coordinate, or meet each other, right?

And have a day full of exciting events for everyone.

So we have over 20 authors joining us for the book festival from all over the country.

And we have one Canadian author.

So I think we're officially international now, in my mind.

And then we have over 30 sessions.

So we have four breakouts and we have 30 sessions that the students can choose from.

So we have tracks of, if you're interested in writing your own book, if you're an artist, there's a track for you.

If you're like me and you're just a reader who loves to read everything, we have a track for you.

So we have it kind of broken out, but they're welcome to participate in any track they wanna, or any session that they wanna participate in.

And then we have some interactive sessions.

So we have a escape room.

We've done this every year, and it's been very popular.

We have a game room where there's always at least one author in there during that session, and they can play board games with the author or with each other, whatever they wanna do.

This year we're adding a reading room.

So there'll be a room where they can just go decompress for a bit and read a book, yeah.

So we have these interactive sessions or interactive rooms that they can go to if they need something other than going and listening to people talk.

We feed everybody lunch for free.

The event's free.

We feed everybody lunch for free at the event as well.

So we try to make it as barrier free as possible so that everybody can attend.

And it's at Rossford Junior Senior High.

It has been every year.

It's a great facility.

It's beautiful.

And it has all the rooms, all the bathrooms, everything that we need to make it a really exciting day for kids.

- Yeah now, about how many people, how many students, kids will be at this event?

- [Denise] So I'm not very good at counting when we're actually there, but last year we had over 400 students register.

We do recommend registering.

It makes things a lot quicker when you get there.

And we do technically have people sign in, but then by the end of the day when everything's packed up, we don't go back and count how many actually signed in.

So I would say about 400.

- [Steve] Yeah, several hundred.

That's pretty amazing.

And Amanda, kind of talk about your role in all of this too.

- [Amanda] Well, I'm supporting the committee, right.

And as we put together this event, this awesome event, and then I'm also serving as a moderator.

So one of those sessions, actually, a couple of the sessions that we're gonna be offering, I'll be kind of like the person there and asking questions of the authors and the illustrators, and just sharing maybe just some insights that I have in my background as somebody who teaches youth literature courses.

And just kind of like helping any teens that may have questions during the day or helping the team in any way I can.

- [Steve] And one of the things, obviously when you brought this to me, man, it's like, there's probably an impression out there that nobody actually reads books anymore.

That everything is online, it's streamed, it's whatever.

And nobody actually physically picks up a book, looks at the pictures, reads the documents.

That's kind of an interesting thing now.

How long has this been going on?

You mentioned several years, but it goes back more than just a couple of years, right?

- [Denise] Yeah.

So it goes back, well, it goes back even more.

We've had the festival for four years, but our actual first year planning the festival was 2019.

And so we were scheduled for our first festival, it was actually gonna be at Bower in Toledo the first weekend in April of 2020.

So three weeks before- - [Steve] Everything went crazy.

- Everything had been planned.

But we had to cancel.

So we've been working on it for over six years.

So it definitely is something that we've really put a lot of thought and effort into making sure we're doing what will provide a great experience for kids.

I love that you brought up the fact that like, people think people aren't reading.

I am formerly an IT data person.

And the statistics always say, oh, only X percent of teens aren't reading at all, right?

But we always, we never look at it as, but actually X percent of teens are reading.

- [Steve] Yeah.

The huge majority still are.

- So let's provide them a way to, A, interact with each other, and B, discover new authors and new things to keep them reading.

So our goal is to keep them reading for fun.

- [Amanda] Yeah.

And celebrate the joy of reading, right?

Because I love how Denise and the committee have celebrated all these different genres of, we have fantasy, so all of like the fantasy readers, they get that fun, you know, there's also the realistic fiction.

There's thrillers, so there's something for every reader.

And the whole festival is just a celebration of reading.

- [Denise] And one of our keynotes is romance this year, because romance is so popular now, so, yeah.

- [Steve] Well, and I think the other part, we're gonna talk to an author, an illustrator in one of the next segments.

I think the great thing is the students, the teens, can go in and talk with these people and ask them questions about how they get into writing, how you go about writing something, because some of 'em are probably aspiring writers, illustrators, authors, whatever.

So it gives them a chance to kind of immerse themselves in somebody who does it and kind of get some insight into what it's like to create books like that.

- [Amanda] Steve, I think that's so important.

When I was growing up, I was able to attend an event like this, and I think that's why I love it and support it so much.

And that guided me to become a writer and a teacher of writing.

It just was really important to me to meet authors and know, like, I can do this?

This is a job?

So yeah, I just think it's so important that the festival is here and that we can foster that kind of like innovative spirit in future writers.

- [Steve] Yeah, and you mentioned that people can sign up in advance.

What's the kind of, how far away have people come to attend this?

I mean, just, I know I'm asking some pretty detailed, but- - [Denise] We actually just finished fundraising.

So one of, again, we always try to make it barrier free.

And one of the things we offer is we offer bus sponsorships for schools.

But busing has gotten quite a bit more expensive lately.

So we actually just finished fundraising to supply a bus for 50 students to come from Cincinnati.

- [Steve] Oh my gosh.

Okay.

- So that's super exciting for us.

So it is spreading a bit.

So we've always mostly focused on Northwest Ohio schools and communicating, so it's exciting to know that the word spreading.

- [Steve] Word's gone that far, sure.

- So, yeah, so we have now we'll have a bus coming from Cincinnati.

- [Steve] Yeah.

Oh, that's great.

Because yeah, it'll soon just be the Ohio Teen Book Festival as opposed to Northwest Ohio.

I mean, did you ever expect that someone from that distance would say, Hey, we want to come up and see this event?

- [Denise] Well, of course in my mind everybody was, you know, in my mind they're coming from Michigan, they're coming from Indiana.

We do have some folks who come down from Michigan.

Michigan is closer than some of Ohio.

But in my mind, yes.

But the logistics and reality of it is that we really appreciate those teachers that are putting the effort in to coordinate a bus to bring students so that they can experience it.

- [Steve] Sure.

Well, good.

We're gonna talk to some of the students that have been involved in this, and obviously to some of the professionals who are here to talk about how they do this and why they do it and how you go about doing this a moment.

Thank you so much for being on, and much success for the book festival this year at Rossford on March 15th.

- [Denise] Thank you so much.

- [Amanda] Yeah, thanks Steve.

- We'll be back in just a moment here on The Journal with more about the Northwest Ohio Teen Book Festival.

Back in just a moment.

Thank you for staying with us on The Journal.

We're talking with representatives and people who are gonna be attending and presenting at the Northwest Ohio Teen Book Festival March 15th at the Rossford Junior and Senior school.

And we're joined by a couple of the creative talents.

We're gonna be, there's quite a list, but we've got, you know, two of the people that are gonna be there.

We have Scoot McMahon and Kristina White.

So thank you both for being here.

And Scoot, I'm gonna ask you this too, Kristina, but Scoot, talk about how you got into this and sort of how your creative process works, because not everybody can do what you guys do, or at least do it as well as you guys do it.

So talk about how maybe you thought as when you were 5-year-old, you know what, I wanna be a writer, a cartoonist, and a book illustrator and that sort of thing.

- Yeah.

Well you, you mentioned five years old.

It's funny because I guess my mom said, my mom and dad said I was two years old when I actually started drawing like pictures that made sense.

So this has been a part of me, a passion for me since I was before I can remember having memories.

So, but as I went through school, I actually went to Rossford Elementary School and High School, which is fun that the Teen Book Fest is going to be in Rossford.

So they encouraged me and helped me grow into becoming an illustrator and a cartoonist especially.

So I write and draw comics and it's been just a passion of mine and something I always knew I wanted to pursue.

And I actually went to Bowling Green State University and majored in, you know, illustration and how to create graphic novels and become a cartoonist.

So it's always been a part of what I do.

And I guess I've always been inspired by the cartoons and video games and movies that I grew up with and also like some paranormal weird stuff, as you'll see.

And which leads into Kristina's book here.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- Yeah.

- And Kristina talk about how you got into this and what your passion is about it as well.

- [Kristina] Well, one of the things that I love about this festival is, is like Scoot, when I was a kid, I always, I always wanted to write a book.

I just always thought that would be something that I would do.

I was into creative writing.

Now interestingly, I went down the nonfiction road.

So my first book was nonfiction, and then the book that I talk about at the festival with my co-author Kevin, who wasn't able to be here today, is called Unnatural Ohio.

And it's about, you know, crypted creatures and ghost stories and legends from Ohio.

And so it's a lot of fun.

It's something that we've always really been into.

So nonfiction sometimes you think isn't that creative, but there's a lot of research involved.

But yet you have to find a way to tell the story and make it interesting and make it fun.

So you look for ways to find the stories of the people who saw these things and what they saw and how to tell the stories and things like that.

- [Steve] Because we get the, you know, you can look at a reference book and get the facts.

Sometimes that's not the most exciting thing.

We can find what you're looking for.

But to write something like that, that is nonfiction, but is still storytelling.

And that's the trick, is to tell a story and yet still impart all of that sort of reference information or why we're talking about it.

Now, Scoot, when you were talking about yours, because you said started at two years old.

Were there teachers during your career and you kind of mentioned the fact that you're going through elementary school, that sort of thing, teachers who encouraged you?

Because we all try to write, they asked us to write things when we're going through grade school, junior high, middle school, high school.

Were there people who said, you know, you've got a real talent for this.

Or they'd say, oh, don't ever do this again.

No, I'm just kidding.

- No.

Yeah, I was super, super lucky.

My kindergarten teacher, of course, my parents knew I could draw pretty well before school started.

But then the kindergarten teacher really went talk to the principal.

I thought I was getting in trouble taking them in there as a kindergarten.

And they wanted to talk about could I draw the, you know, program for the whole elementary school, like program play or whatever they were doing.

I was only in kindergarten.

I think I had to draw a butterfly, so I knew always at a young age.

And I had great teachers.

Mrs. Fredericks was my art teacher in elementary school, then Mrs. Diane Gladio.

And then I was just talking about in college, I had a Charles Kanwischer at Bowling Green State University who encouraged this.

So yes, it was like basically like a community behind me, really supportive and, you know, recognized that I was really passionate about this and had a, hopefully had a future in this.

- Now, does your parents ever say you can't make a living at that or not, you know, we talk with people who are like actors and things like, yeah, my parents said you can't make a living at acting.

And yet, but so they did.

They were encouraging then.

- [Scoot] Yeah, you know, and a little bit of me wishes they would've, because I have other cartoonist friends, illustrators, and they had to deal with like, all this adversity to become cartoonists.

And I'm like, no.

My family and my teachers and teachers- - [Steve] They were all on board.

- [Scoot] They were all on board, yeah.

They were all supportive.

- [Steve] Cool.

Yeah.

I mean that's, 'cause that's what you hear sometimes is like, it was a struggle because nobody thought I could do this, and yet you forge ahead and do it.

In this case, people recognized the talent, said, oh, go for this.

You're, this is what you, and you wanted to do it.

- [Scoot] Yeah, and I remember we had to take these assessment tests.

Christina, you may remember these too, who would like tell you what you were gonna be when you were older?

And I always knew how to answer these tests, so it would like lead down the path- - [Steve] Get to the right point.

- [Scoot] You're going to be a cartoonist or you're gonna be an illustrator.

- [Steve] Outsmarted them, huh?

Good idea, yeah.

And how about you, Kristina?

- [Kristina] Kind of similar.

Both of my parents were in journalism or public relations writing field, so similar kind of thing, you know, I was always same thing, good at writing and that kind of thing.

And so, but similarly, I was like, oh, I'm gonna go to college and I'm gonna go into newspapers.

And both my parents were like, oh, you're never gonna make any money at that.

You're gonna have crazy hours.

But I did it anyway.

And so I still do writing for magazines and stuff on the side, but that's kind of how I got into doing this.

- [Steve] Now when you were in school, did you do writing for like the student paper, the whatever, those kind of things?

- [Kristina] Yes, yes.

So I went to Eastern Michigan University and I worked for the school newspaper and I had some fantastic professors who really encouraged me and I'll always be grateful to them.

And of course my teachers in high school and in elementary school as well.

- [Steve] Yeah now, when you talk about this particular book, how did that idea evolve?

Who came up with that?

Because that's always one of the things I finish.

Like where does just the original idea come from, let alone the expansion after that?

So when you looked at that book says, well, let's do a book on this.

And you went, well, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Or did you maybe sort through other ideas, other concepts, other things before settling on this?

Or this just hit?

- So I have always kind of wanted to do a ghost book, but there are a lot of ghost books out there.

So I kind of just sort of hadn't really done it.

And Kevin and I both work at the Hayes Presidential Library and Museums, and we came up with this idea to do an exhibit on Ohio folklore.

And so this was first in exhibit and then the history press contacted Kevin and said, Hey, would you guys like to do a book on this?

And so for us it was a no brainer.

And so that's kind of how we leaned into it and we're like, oh, we can do Cryptids and UFOs and ghost stories, and that's kind of how it came about.

So the hard part was actually narrowing it down.

We were actually over our word count to the point where editors like, okay, that's it.

You gotta cut it off at this point.

So, yeah.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah.

No, and you've both talked about, you know, how supportive people were and I know, and obviously you get some of this genetically because obviously your parents understood this and yours did too, Scoot.

But I understand, like, do you see that following through now?

Because you said you've got a 9-year-old.

So talk about the involvement there, because obviously he's maybe going down the same track here, seems to have thoughts like that.

- [Scoot] Yeah, he's really into drawing and he's into like dinosaurs and robots and Titanic, randomly Titanic.

Yeah we will do like family drawing nights where we'll sit at the table and I'll start like a comic.

I'll do two panels and then he'll come in and he'll do two panels, continue the story.

- [Steve] Really?

- It's a exercise I'm actually gonna do at the Teen Book Fest is like, I'm going to teach kids how to come up with characters just from like scribbling or doodling and put those characters into a comic.

And that's something I work on at home with my own kids.

And we do that kind of as a family, the fun like comic drawing nights and stuff like that, so yeah.

- [Steve] Wow.

Great.

You know, as I said at the very beginning, it's amazing to me the creativity that you guys have and people who, the professionalism and what you do, because not everybody can take an idea and turn it into a finished product that other people will actually want to sample and use.

So it is always so impressive.

And then the fact that you, this is something you wanted to do almost from, you know, the day you started thinking about doing something, it's pretty incredible and you're passing it along to hope all these students and kids that are gonna be at the Teen Book Festival.

So thank you so much for coming on and talking about this and good, best wishes on your future projects and I hope you have a great time at the book festival as well.

So thank you so much.

- [Scoot/Kristina] Thanks for having us.

- Great.

We'll be back in just a moment.

We're gonna talk to some of the students who are involved in the Ohio Teen Book Festival, Northwest Ohio Teen Book Festival here on The Journal in just a moment back.

Thanks for staying with us on The Journal.

We have guests who are part of the Northwest Ohio Teen Book Festival, which is gonna happen March 15th at Rossford Junior School.

Junior and senior high school.

And we're joined by three of the students who are involved in this.

Lea Matthews, Harmony Kelsey and Ava Tullius.

Lea, talk about why you're involved in the Teen Book festival and what your role is in it.

- Yeah, so we're all involved in the book festival's teen advisory board.

So we actually helped to design the bookmarks that are gonna be used in the scavenger hunt and we also get to decorate for the escape room.

And we also get to help give input and even recommend some authors to come and join the book festival.

We're also joined by other high schoolers, so freshmen through seniors are allowed to join.

And a lot of us also do book club and it's just a great way for us to talk about the books that we like and to really be a part of it.

- [Steve] Yeah.

Yeah.

And Harmony, are all of you from Rossford High School?

Oh, okay.

So Harmony, talk about why you're involved and what you find enjoyable about doing it.

- I'm involved because I'm always looking for new books to read and it's, I kind of find it hard when I go to the library and there's just so many choices.

It's hard to be like, oh, I'm gonna like this author, this style.

So when I get to hear the authors talk and like I see authors that I really are just entertaining and that they're just really captivating and I'm like, I wanna go read their book.

- [Steve] Yeah.

And Ava?

- [Ava] I just, I'm a big reader.

I've been reading since I could remember.

And so when I got to Rossford, for the, because I joined when I was in high school, I immediately sought out book club and then our lovely advisor, Ms. Birch, introduced me to the Teen Book festival, was like, you'll be an amazing person to help with.

And I've been just with ever since.

- Yeah, now how many of you, besides the three of you, how many people are involved on this part being the advisory panel?

- [Ava] We're a smaller crew, I would say.

But there's, we're growing each year.

- [Steve] Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

Now you talk about becoming involved in this.

How did you find out about it, Leah?

When did like you just sort of came across it and say this would you'd like, you'd like doing this or you'd enjoy doing this or is it a function kind of with the book club to kind of slide into this a little bit?

- [Lea] Yeah, so I've gone to every single one of the book festivals.

So I actually remember being a participant before I ever joined the teen advisory board.

So when I found out that I could be a bigger part of it, I was really excited about that opportunity.

- [Steve] Yeah.

And Harmony?

- [Harmony] So I went to the book festival freshman year and then sophomore year I had some friends who are part of the council and they got me to join it.

- [Steve] Oh yeah, yeah.

Ava?

- [Ava] So my freshman year I was kind of a quieter one, so I read every book in the library and so Ms. Birch kind of kept an eye on me and was like, Hey, you should come to this.

And so I went to my first team meeting.

So before I'd even know what the book festival was, I was on the board helping set it up.

- [Steve] Yeah.

Now do each of you have like a favorite genre?

Like the type of book you wanna read?

Is there something that you go to like, this is what I really wanna look at today?

I mean, what about that Lea?

- [Lea] Yeah, totally.

I love horror novels, scary books.

And that's what I really like about this festival is that they have a lot of horror authors and I actually talk to the authors who wrote Unnatural Ohio and I really enjoy going to that event and getting to hear them talk about that book.

So that's a really fun part of the festival for me.

- [Steve] What about you, Harmony?

What's your favorite go-to topic?

- [Harmony] It really depends on my mood, but I switch between like dystopian, fantasy, historical fiction, but it all with like a subplot of romance.

- [Steve] Ah, okay.

Now what's this?

Describe historical fiction.

How do you define that?

So it's historic but it also has some novel written around it a little bit, like little literary license.

- [Harmony] Fake characters written during like real time periods.

- [Steve] Real times, okay.

Yeah, cool, cool, yeah.

- [Ava] I am the biggest romance fantasy person in the whole world.

I'm actually the reason we got, K.C West is our keynote speaker, I begged Miss Birch because that was the first book I ever read was from K.C West, so I thought it would be an amazing idea if we could get her here.

- [Steve] Yeah.

And it worked out, yeah.

So when it comes to selecting, as you just mentioned, do you each of you bring forward ideas of who you'd like to see at the festival?

So yeah, I mean now if obviously not every recommendation be fulfilled because artists and writers have other schedules and things like that.

If you are doing this again next year, do each of you have an idea of say, well I'd like this person to be there.

Is anything comes to mind or not?

Or am I way ahead of the curve on that one?

- [Ava] Well we always have ideas and some of them are outrageous.

Like one of them, what was one of 'em?

It was the author of Harry Potter.

Oh we recommended and Ms. Birch was like, let's lower the bar a little bit.

- [Steve] If you're gonna go big, just go, you might as well go all the way, right?

- [Ava] I think we all sometimes have an idea.

We just don't want to admit who it is because we don't think it could happen.

But then we do speak up and if we can get him, it's amazing.

- [Steve] Yeah now Harmony, do you have a favorite author or somebody that you go to as far as, besides topic, but somebody who, this is who I really like to read?

- [Harmony] Yes, Mindy McGinnis has been coming to the book festival for a couple years now and I just love listening to her talk and her style.

And she's very humorous and also but down to real life and it's just very entertaining.

- [Steve] Yeah.

And Lea?

- [Lea] Just any horror author at all will do it for me.

It's my favorite book to read and I'll read anything.

- [Steve] So are there, so give us a couple of authors in the horror genre that you're talking about.

Anybody who comes to mind for, so if I said here's somebody that I should look at, go get the book and read today, who would it be?

Is there a title or a specific author?

- Lea] One author I can think of that has been mentioned by other people on our advisory board is Tiffany D. Jackson.

We really like her books and hers are really scary.

She has like a haunted house book, so if we could get her, that would be pretty cool.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then you, what about you Harmony?

Anybody you'd say, Hey, this is who we should get next.

- [Harmony] Oh no.

- [Steve] No, no?

Yeah.

Then but who is your, you mentioned kind of, you're into the historical fiction.

Is there one writer there that stands above rest of the other ones?

Or one if you have a choice of five books of historical fiction?

This is the one I'll read first because it's so and so.

- [Harmony] Not really.

I usually just pick because of like I read it and then I don't even look at the author.

- [Steve] Oh, okay.

(all laughing) They don't like to hear that.

But that's okay.

Is there, is there an era, like a part of history, a particular timeframe or anything you you're more interested in or is just, it's all good?

- [Harmony] It's all good.

- [Steve] It's all good.

Okay, yeah.

And Ava, what about you?

- [Ava] I don't know who I would pick again next year.

I got the one author I was head over heels for.

- [Steve] So you're all good.

Well great.

And I appreciate you guys doing this and when you talk about this, do you encourage like other, your friends and other people to read more and become involved in this?

Because I dunno if you mentioned the beginning of the show, we've got a little minute here that you, a lot of times I think there's an impression that kids don't, you guys, I call you kids and I apologize for that.

That you don't read anymore, that everything's looking at a computer screen or it's just, it's not tangible in terms of, oh look, there's a book.

And obviously you sort of dispel that myth by doing what you're doing and becoming involved in this.

So appreciate that very much.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here and thank you for doing this and best wishes on getting the next author you want to be at the event while you're still doing it.

Great.

Thank you so much.

- [Harmony] Thank you.

- [Steve] We appreciate you being at this.

And again, thank you so much.

You can check us out at wbgu.org.

You can watch us every Thursday night at 8:00 PM on WGBU-PBS.

We will see you again next time.

Good night and good luck.

(upbeat music)