Bookworm Literary Festival: Will Buckingham

Whoever sponsored Will Buckingham's trip to China for the Bookworm Literary Festival this year certainly got their money's worth. He conducted a workshop in novel writing, promoted his newest book based on 易經 (what is often referred to as I Ching), and spoke on a panel discussing the life of a writer. And if all of that weren't enough, he had written an utterly charming children's book, The Snorgh and the Sailor, and it was his appearance in support of this where we met him.

More after the jump


The Snorgh and the Sailor is the story of one grouchy, unsociable marsh-dweller and what happens to him when an oblivious, friendly, talkative sailor-rabbit washes up on his doorstep.




Buckingham read aloud from his book, asking the audience to help with sound effects. They were to be the wind, every time he mentioned it, which was rather often given the setting of Norfolk, England.




Sound effects? My kids were totally down with that. Buckingham was probably just going for howls and "WHOOOOOOOOOO" but Myles and Brigid added paper shaking.

During the reading, he made sure to pause with a very important safety note: that if, like the Snorgh, we thought we would take to the sea in a bathtub, we needed to be sure that we plugged the drain first.





After he finished reading from the book, he invited everyone to imagine their own illustrations of the adventures of the Snorgh and the Sailor.




Brigid, finding the Snorgh difficult to draw, drew the bathtub on top of a wave, the book's main characters cowering inside.




Myles cast them in one of his favorite movies, moving the action to the planet Hoth and employing a Tauntaun to pull the tub.



At first both Buckingham and I thought that Myles was drawing a dinosaur. On my part it wasn't a stretch to believe since it often is a dinosaur in Myles' sketches. Buckingham asked me if we had been to the Natural History Museum in Beijing. I admitted that it had been a few years, though when we are home in Pennsylvania we practically live at the Carnegie. I was surprised he was familiar with it, but then he told me that his girlfriend was working on a master's degree in museum studies, specializing in natural history museums. She had recently spent time in Pittsburgh at our beloved Natural History Museum.

At the very end, there was, of course, the book signing.



We were getting ready to leave when I took one more look at the table of books featured for the Literary Festival. They had added to the stacks Will Buckingham's newest book, Sixty Four Chance Pieces: A Book of Changes. I had read the description of the book and event in the Bookworm's advance advertising, and I thought I wouldn't be much interested in that. I supposed that anyone who would dare write a book of stories based on the 易經, and a Westerner at that, had to be some kind of a presumptuous jag (as we say in Pittsburgh). This was, then, an occasion like I mentioned in my Cherry Denman post, where meeting the author caused me to rethink my admittedly uninformed opinion of a book. If the same Will Buckingham who wrote this adorable children's book and who acted it out in front of a roomful of children also wrote Sixty-Four Chance Pieces, then I would likely not find his 易經 book pompous puffery. To underscore my point, here is another video of Buckingham, reading from The Snorgh and the Sailor.

Sixty-Four Chance Pieces has been a surprising and incredible read, at least as far as I have gotten. I am so grateful this book has found its way into my hands, especially since I was much too ready to dismiss it.