Our 7th Annual Book Festival took place at the Pepco Edison Place Gallery on Saturday November 16th. Over 130 people attended the event including FLOC students, volunteers, parents, and board members. This year we were able to celebrate our annual literacy event by distributing over 1,170 books to the 73 students who attended.
One of the highlights of the event was the presentation by author Marc Tyler Nobleman. He explained his start into writing by winning a contest in elementary school and how his love for writing and comic books characters grew over the years into a prominent career. All students were able to walk home with a signed copy of one of his books such as Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman. After Nobleman’s presentation, the students rotated through the different areas to meet and take pictures with Super Why from PBS; choose their books; and dress up like super heroes for our FLOC photo booth.
We are extremely grateful for getting to partner with PBS this year and to receive extra activities for our students. All students were able to leave with a reading chart which they can send back to PBS after they have read a certain number of books to receive a prize.
The Book Festival was made possible by many great sponsors this year. Over 400 books were donated through book drives held by Raffa, Sedgwick LLP, SIGAL Construction, and University of Maryland’s Chi Sigma Iota Honor Society. We also received over 300 books from Books for America. We would like to thank First Book DC for a wide variety of new books as well as providing volunteers for the event. Special thanks to JBG Companies for sponsoring the event, especially our board member, Matt Blocher, for making it possible.
Finally, we would also like to thank all of our FLOC families and volunteers for coming out to the event. We hope you enjoyed getting to mingle with some of our staff as well as meet students that are also in the program. We hope to see you all next year!
(Catherine Brenner is an NTP Site Coordinator at FLOC).
