Much Ado About Books, 

Jacksonville, February 2003

Chris Davey attended the "Much Ado About Books" festival in Jacksonville Florida as one of the featured authors. The festival, that raises funds for the public library service, is fast becoming one of the leading literary events in the United States. Visit the website at www.muchadoaboutbooks.com

Chris participated in open forums with other well known authors discussing the historical novel, and the series format for fiction. These were filmed for the C-SPAN "Book tv" show. On the previous day many of the authors visited local schools to share their enthusiasm for their subject and writing in general.

Chris visited schools in the Jacksonville Beach area and was delighted with the warm reception he received. In this centenary year of aviation, teachers are making great efforts to spread the word about the Wright Brothers and the importance of their work and that of the other aviation pioneers. Chris was able to add to this with the knowledge he has gained during years of research for the Will Turner Flight Logs series using a selection of slides showing some of the weird and wonderful machines people tried, and sometimes succeeded in using to get airborne.

The final point of the talk was to reinforce the message to the students that they all had the potential to write, even if they were not planning a career as authors. One of the students said afterwards, "Way cool, dude!" That was Chris Davey's opinion of his audience, they were seriously "cool". 

The final part of this tour involved a visit to Mary McArthur Elementary in Fayeteville NC where Chris spoke to the whole school in groups organized by class. Again we were impressed by how well the teachers had inspired and engaged the interest of these young students. After talking at length to each group and showing them a variety of photographs they would not usually have seen, the students had the opportunity to ask questions. Some of these were very mature and by no means easy to answer. One nine year old wanted Chris's opinion on what had happened to Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan. Mary McArthur Elementary is involved in a project celebrating the Centenary of Flight. We count it a privilege to have been able to help with this and with the work of the schools visited in the course of Much Ado About Books.