Los Angeles Kids' Book Festival

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There is a face a child makes when they meet the person who wrote their favorite book — a small, visible recalculation as they work out that stories are made by actual humans, and that they are also an actual human. Everything else about the day exists to produce that face.

Nearly a hundred children's authors and illustrators fill a park in West Hollywood with live storytimes, drawing demonstrations, and signing lines that wrap back around themselves. Kids watch a picture appear on paper in real time. They ask the questions adults are too self-conscious to ask. They leave clutching a signed book they will still own in twenty years, wherever they end up living.

It is loud, joyful, and completely free, which is the genuinely radical part.

Bring the kid who reads under the covers with a flashlight. Then bring the one who has not found their book yet. This is where that changes.