St. Croix District of The Department of Education represented the territory for the second time, at the 2003 National Book Festival, on October 4, in Washington, D.C.

            This year’s festival, attended by 70,000 visitors, is one of the nation’s largest book fairs. This year,  it featured more than eighty award-winning and nationally known authors, illustrators, poets and storytellers from across the nation. Two new pavilions – one devoted exclusively to poetry and a second to authors of books on the home and family – were added to the festival, organized by the Library of Congress and hosted by Laura Bush.

            In the Pavillion of States, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico had display tables alongside other states, while U.S. Samoa and Guam shared a single table. With thousands of items provided by the Department of Tourism, the US Virgin Islands was well represented.  The National Park Service Bookstore and the Florence Williams Library provided other staple reading material.

             Once again, there were other measurable dividends for the attending US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rican delegates, who habitually arrive a day or two early.

            On October 3, Dr. John Cole, Director of the Center of the Book, included us on an informative tour of the Library of Congress’s Jefferson building, on the eve of Mrs. Laura Bush’s dinner for NBF corporate patrons. Dr. Cole’s tour was as exhaustive as it was breathtaking in details, and anecdotes. Amidst deadline installations by workmen and security personnel, we were taken to balconies: standing up-close to the famed cupola, its frescoes of figures of civilizations, and Seals of States – illumined against the October sky. We learned from Dr. Cole, that the seals of Hawaii and Puerto Rico have been recently site-designated, and precious space in the upper reaches overlooking the Main Reading Room is now being negotiated.

            We took photographs with our privileged tour group , and presented The Caribbean Writer, Volume 17, to Dr. Cole, on behalf of the journal’s editor, Dr. Marvin Williams.

            Immediately after our Library of Congress tour, we were off to the Canon Building, and as arranged by Dr. Annette Fortuno, Puerto Rico’s NBF delegate, we met two Staff Assistants, Legnaly Diaz-Lopez and Larissa Ortiz, from Congressman Acevedo-Vila’s office, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. These professional persons were our cheerful Friday afternoon underground guides to the Hall of Statues. There, we joined other visiting groups to the Capitol Dome, dwarfed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., among many other larger-than-life figures from the respective states.

            Later that evening, at the National Book festival reception in the Botanical Gardens Dr. Cole welcomed the expectant crowd. The exotic nursery of towering palms and flowering plants provided sufficient ambling spaces for the resplendent guests to share resources. Attending representatives from States and US Territories (US Samoa, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands) mutually enjoyed the provenance of storytelling traditions and modern literatures, of which Islander cultures share a rich and ongoing strand.

            Edwidge Danticat, a Brooklyn-based writer of national prominence, and invited to participate in the 2003 National Book Festival, listed the University of the Virgin Islands journal, The Caribbean Writer, among her program credits.

   The next morning, we could hear the first wave of NBF visitors coming through the pavilion  – eager booklovers and collectors – as we struggled to set up our display tables. Old friends from Alaska and California recognized us, exchanging giveaways: bookmarks, posters and promotional books. Each state boasted variety in representational style, and a now-distinctive NBF mastery of book-fair lore.

The 2003 National Book Festival, a vast and casual democratic exercise: trading stories and authorial tales, and cementing kinship – all of it experienced by the young readers of America.

The District of St. Croix has created a fore-runner “National Book Festival” web page on its server (www.stx.k12.vi) .  Here we share the ongoing spirit of the festival with our National Book Festival Report. We share our 2002-2003 National Book Festival photographs, while creating links to the culture of books and literature of US Territories.

                                                                                    -Edgar O. Lake