2025 Brazos Valley Children’s Literary Festival: Open a Book, Open a World

Chris Barton

Chris Barton is the author of picture books including bestseller “Shark vs. Train”, Sibert Honor-winning “The Day-Glo Brothers”, and “Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions”, celebrated on 21 state lists. His newest nonfiction books include “Glitter Everywhere!” (one of NPR’s “Books We Love” for 2023), “Moving Forward” (an SLJ Best Book of 2022), and “How to Make a Book (About My Dog)”. Chris and wife Jennifer Ziegler, author of Worser, live in Austin and co-host the children’s literature video series “This One’s Dedicated to…” He also serves as vice president of the Texas Institute of Letters.

Don Tate

Don Tate is an award-winning illustrator of numerous critically acclaimed books for children, including “Swish! The Slam-Dunking, Alley-Ooping, High-Flying Harlem Globetrotters”, “No Small Potatoes: Junios G. Groves and His Kingdom in Kansas”, “Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions”, “Hope’s Gift”, and many others.

He is also an award-winning author. Some of his books for children include: “Jerry Changed The Game: How Engineer Jerry Lawson Revolutionized Video Games Forever”, “William Still and His Freedom Stories: Father of the Underground Railroad”, “Strong As Sandow: How Eugen Sandow Became The Strongest Man on Earth”, “Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton”, and “It Jes’ Happened: When Bill Traylor Started To Draw”.

Don is a founding host of the The Brown Bookshelf –a blog dedicated to books for African American young readers; and a member of the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign, created to address the lack of diverse, non-majority narratives in children’s literature. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his family.

Mari Mancusi

Mari Mancusi is an Emmy award winning former TV news producer and author of more than thirty books for kids, teens and adults. Her bestselling series have been awarded spots on major state reading lists (including the Texas Bluebonnet and Florida’s Sunshine State lists) and have been featured selections in the Scholastic Book Fairs and clubs. She also writes tie-in novels for Disney Press (“Frozen”, “Nightmare Before Christmas”) and Netflix (“Wednesday”). In addition to writing, Mari is a world traveler, horror fan, and gamer. She lives in Austin, Texas with her husband, daughter and two dogs. 

Bernadette Nason

Award-winning English storyteller/author/actor, Bernadette Nason, has been a Texas Commission on the Arts’ touring artist since 2002. She visits schools, libraries, museums, camps, festivals, and conferences throughout the U.S. with multicultural tales, personal stories, and a variety of workshops. Bernadette appears often in regional theatre, and is a company member of Austin Playhouse. She’ll soon be seen as Miss Marple in “A Murder is Announced” at The Vortex Theatre. She’s written two critically-acclaimed memoirs, “Stealing Baby Jesus” and “Tea in Tripoli”, but she’s probably most famous for appearing in the movie, “Miss Congeniality”. Bernadette lives in Austin.

Alex G. Zarate

Gabriela Morales

Gloria Amescua

Katherine Briggs

Samuel E. Pittman II

Books by the authors will be available on-site for purchase at the event through our partner Hyperbole Bookstore in College Station, with 10% of the proceeds being donated to the Friends of the Library to help support the library system.