The Library of Congress National Book Festival will celebrate its 25th year on September 6, 2025. For this year’s festival information, visit the 2025 National Book Festival website.
To honor the occasion, we are taking the 24 weeks leading up to this year’s festival at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center to highlight two videos each week from past National Book Festivals, from the festival’s first year in 2001 to 2024. Each week, we’ll highlight a past festival year with a video from an adult writer and one from a children’s writer. We hope you enjoy scrolling through the past with us! Check out the other videos from the 2001 festival here.
David McCullough is the award-winning biographer, historian, lecturer and narrator of some of television’s most distinguished historical series. He has twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for two presidential biographies: for “Truman” in 1993 and “John Adams” in 2002, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006. McCullough has also been honored with the National Book Foundation Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award and was twice winner of the National Book Award and the Francis Parkman Prize. He lived in Massachusetts until his passing in 2022 at age 89.
Watch the video below to experience the insight and wisdom of David McCullough, who told a comprehensive story of every subject that he made subject of his books, infusing humanity into revered and reviled historical figures alike. Particularly interesting parts of his presentation are marked below via time stamps.
David McCullough starts speaking at 1:22, and the video proceeds as follows:
7:10: Researching the 18th century
11:28: Looking at history with the advantage of hindsight
15:18: John and Abigail Adams in their moment in history
25:25: Literacy and writing in the 18th century
28:35: John Quincy Adams and John Adams’ legacy
35:50: Reading from Petrarch’s writing in 1346
39:41: Q&A Begins
Ashley Bryan was a celebrated teacher, author and artist. He committed himself to filling the void of Black representation by creating children’s books about the African and African American experience, publishing over seventy books. Most were his own creation, and many illustrated texts of other significant authors such as Nikki Giovanni, Nikki Grimes, Langston Hughes and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Bryan has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, ranging from ten honorary degrees to many lifetime achievement awards. His writing and illustrations have garnered him a range of prestigious recognition: he was the recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award four times; he also won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award and the Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Award. He passed in 2022 at age 98. (From Ashley Bryan Center obituary)
Ashley Bryan was a highly accomplished writer of poetry and prose, as well as a decorated illustrator, but we want to also remember his legacy as a talented oral folklorist. Watch the video below to experience the various storytelling traditions that he demonstrates with much spirit and vigor, which proceeds as follows:
0:54: Reading of Nikki Giovanni’s poems from the book “The Sun is So Quiet”
1:55: Reading “Prickled Pickles Don’t Smile” with the audience
4:17: Reading “The Blackbird’s Party” from his book “Sing to the Sun”
6:17: Reading “Do Good”
8:30: Reciting “Things” by Eloise Greenfield
11:28: Using poetry in prose in “The African Tales”
19:45: Recorder version of the spiritual “All Night, All Day”
Come back next week for highlights from 2003!