Where readers can meet area authors and share their love of books!
April 17, 2010
10:00 – 3:00
Chamber of Commerce Convention Center
100 Stadium Dr.
Georgetown, TX
This festival features only writers who target adult audiences. Children’s and young adult authors will be invited to the Hill Country Book Festival for Children and Youth.
Attention Children, Teens, Parents, and Grandparents of Central Texas!
November 14, 2009 more than 40 children and YA authors will be
Hill Country Book Festival
showcasing their work and interacting with their readers at the Hill Country Book Festival for Children and Youth 2009 to be held in the Georgetown, Texas Public Library from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm.
An excellent way to kick off the Christmas season!
Nine authors will be presenting for the children and teens throughout the day along with writing activities and practice in developing and illustrating their own books.
A panel discussion on “College Preparation Tips” will be held from 1:00-2:45, and a Scrabble Tournament will be on going throughout the day.
At 3:00, the awards to the winners of the Hill Country Book Festival writing competition will be presented to the top three in each age category. The grand prize is a Dell Netbook Computer.
Activities throughout the day include a magician; face painting, and elementary oral readers. Check out the festival Web site for more details.
The Adventures of Scampy Churchmouse would never have come into being if it were not for the social networking site Facebook. This is proof of its power to bring people from all parts of the country together.
This story was written in the early 1970s to explain the Trinity to my own children, Teresa and Philip. Time passed; the manuscript remained in the box. Ten years later, we were living in a small town in Montana when my first book was published. With that confidence, I considered publishing The Adventures of Scampy Churchmouse. Finding an illustrator in an isolated town of 350 seemed impossible, except my daughter, now in middle school, had a classmate who was an excellent artist. Sheree did a number of sketches for me, but the path to publication was blocked and the illustrations and loose pages went back into a box.
Time went by. The pages of the manuscript turned yellow. I changed addresses twelve times, my last name even changed. My son and daughter each had a son and daughter. I went on to publish fifteen other books, but The Adventures of Scampy Churchmouse remained in the box.
One bright Texas spring day I was walking around theneighborhood with a friend discussing the local children’s book festival. She asked if I had ever written a children’s book and I told her about Scampy. Her interest was immediately peaked and she asked to see it. We walked back to my house and I pulled the yellow pages and illustrations from the shelf and dusted them off.
With an extensive art background, my neighbor was amazed that such sketches could be done by a middle school student and encouraged me to try to publish the story again now that the technology had changed. One major problem: Twenty-six years later, how could I possibly locate Sheree to obtain her permission to use her sketches in the book? Would she even remember doing them?
Not knowing where else to turn, I turned to Facebook. I only had one Facebook friend from that area of Montana, but she did not remember Sheree. However, there was a Facebook friend of a friend on her page that I remembered. On a long shot, I contacted that friend of a friend through her Inbox. A week went by and I heard nothing so I assumed Sheree could not be located.
About a week later, a message appeared in my Facebook Inbox containing Sheree’s married name, address, and telephone number. Even more amazing, when I contacted Sheree she actually remembered the sketches she had done in middle school.
Six weeks later, The Adventures of Scampy Churchmouse wasavailable through amazon.com for others to enjoy how Scampy learned about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Posted by Ann Bell 
At 3:00, the awards to the winners of the Hill Country Book Festival writing competition will be presented to the top three in each age category. The grand prize is a Dell Netbook Computer.
I changed addresses twelve times, my last name even changed. My son and daughter each had a son and daughter. I went on to publish fifteen other books, but 
One bright Texas spring day I was walking around theneighborhood with a friend discussing the local children’s book festival. She asked if I had ever written a children’s book and I told her about Scampy. Her interest was immediately peaked and she asked to see it. We walked back to my house and I pulled the yellow pages and illustrations from the shelf and dusted them off.
a Facebook friend of a friend on her page that I remembered. On a long shot, I contacted that friend of a friend through her Inbox. A week went by and I heard nothing so I assumed Sheree could not be located.
