Five Great Things About the BBF

Gabriella Saavedra ’20 / Emetainment Monthly Staff Writer

The Boston Book Festival is an annual event focused around, you guessed it, books. On October 15 I had the pleasure of experiencing the Boston Book Festival for the this time, and since I never had been there before I didn’t really know what to expect. Well after my experience I can honestly say that it was one of the best Saturdays of my life! There were too many things going on that day, and not a long enough word limit for this article. So instead, here is my list of the “5 Most Amazing Things About The Boston Book Festival!”

Books! DUH!

Of course a book festival was going to have tons of books! There was just no way that I was going to go to a festival with hundreds of books and not buy some, so I bought two! The festival had every genre of literature ranging from children’s picture books to the newest published novels. So if you enjoy reading and are looking for something new to check out, the Boston Book Festival is the place for you!

Making Connections

College is the time to start preparing for the real world, and what better way to do that than by making connections? And do you know where you can start doing that? The Boston Book Festival. The first booth I stumbled across happened to be a booth for Merrimack Media, a publishing company who does offer internships to Emerson College students. When I went up the the woman working the booth she seemed extremely pleased to hear that I was from Emerson College. She was quick to bring up internships and said that if I was ever interested in an internship to contact her. She then handed over her personal business card and just like that I became one step closer to getting involved in publishing. Merrimack Media was just one of the multiple publishing companies present at the event though, and almost all of the other companies also commented on how they loved Emerson and the students there. So if you plan to work in publishing I strongly recommend that you attend the festival next year in order to form connections early in life.

Child Involvement

I’m sure you’d expect kids to want to sleep in on Saturday, right? I know I did. But to my surprise a lot of children seemed to be present at the festival. Why? The answer is quite simply that there were tons of activities! At most of the booths there were quiz games, writing activities, or even coloring books to engage children of all ages. The best thing about the activities was that afterwards the children were more likely to take an interest in the books surrounding them! What a creative way to encourage kids to read!

Free Stuff

As a broke college students I think we all can agree that free whatever is amazing! I got free buttons, free candy, and even two free posters! They even had free treats for dogs! All you have to do is walk up to a booth and talk to the people there, and they you’ll be handed all sorts of free things. It’s as easy as that!

Events

The festival has such a wide collection of events that there was something for everyone. Some of the events were seminars that talked about the writing process and about different authors. There were also more engaging events like live music, tours around the city, and On The Spot Poetry where you could receive a personally poem crafted by a local poet. When I went to that event all the poet asked me was for a theme and my email so he could send my the poem after five minutes. Well five minutes later my phone buzzed and I received an email with a poem attached to it about good, evil, and what falls in-between the two. Considering the vague theme I gave the poet he did a wonderful job. I have that poem saved and find myself rereading from time to time. Having a whole poem dedicated to you is enough to really make a person feel special!