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The Inquiring Mind BOOKtopia The West Vancouver Children's Literature Festival All kinds of people came to town to participate in the recent festival including giant puppets, slam poets and award-winning authors. The festival, which took place on May 12th through 14th, was the first of its kind in West Vancouver. It was the brainchild of Library Board member Fanny Patterson and involved both the Library and the West Vancouver School District. The West Vancouver Memorial Library Foundation was the main sponsor with additional support from the North Shore News, Chapters/ Indigo, the Vancouver Sun Raise-a-Reader Foundation and Whole Foods. The festival consisted of four events. Two of the events were for West Vancouver students in grades 2 and 5. Over 900 students came to the Kay Meek Centre to hear two award-winning authors speak. On Thursday evening, there was a poetry slam for teens hosted by several professional slam poets. The same poets had gone into the schools during the previous weeks to present a series of workshops and demonstrations. The final event was a fantastic puppet show put on by an internationally recognized team of puppeteers called Tears of Joy. The magnificent elephant above is one of the puppets they used to tell the West African folktale of Anansi the Spider. www.westvanlib.org