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Celebrating Thomas Jefferson, His Love of Books, and Fifteen Years of the National Book Festival

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nbf-2015-home-bannerIt’s hard to believe that it’s been fifteen years since the Library of Congress and 20,000 of our closest friends first came together to celebrate books, authors, and reading. This year the National Book Festival is bigger than ever, with more than 170 authors, 1000 volunteers, and a wealth of opportunities to celebrate the joys of reading.

This year we also mark the 200th anniversary of the purchase of Thomas Jefferson’s books to help rebuild the Library of Congress. As a salute to Thomas Jefferson, his comment “I Cannot Live Without Books” is the theme for this year’s festival.

September - back to work - back to school - back to BOOKS. V. Donaghue, 1940.
September – back to work – back to school – back to BOOKS. V. Donaghue, 1940.

The Library’s education specialists will be celebrating Jefferson and reading in our booth at the Festival. We will be on the lower level of the Washington Convention Center with our colleagues from the Young Readers Center. Visitors may:

  • Read books about Thomas Jefferson;
  • Tell us what books you can’t live without;
  • Arrange books the way that Jefferson did into the categories of Memory, Reason and Imagination;
  • Read important documents by Jefferson in his handwriting, and try writing some of his most noteworthy phrases in their own handwriting.

Teachers will also have the opportunity to learn more about teaching with free primary sources from the Library’s collections and to try out student discovery sets.

We look forward to seeing you this coming Saturday, September 5th, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. The event is free and open to the public. Doors open to the public at 9am and events start at 10am.

Be sure to tell us you heard about the Book Festival via this blog, and watch the Library’s Twitter feed for teachers, @TeachingLC, as well as the hashtag #NatBookFest15.

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