The 14th annual Children’s Arts and Literacy Festival was bigger than ever, adding new statues to the expanded Storybook Garden and welcoming more visitors than any year in its history.
Families filled the city’s downtown — moving from one festival station to the next. Food trucks buzzed, energetic kids music permeated downtown, and children's laughter echoed through the festival.
Reading stations dotted downtown, where kids could gather to hear stories about Winnie the Pooh and his friends. After each reading, children created themed crafts that brought the stories to life—AND Lynn Barnette, head of Abilene Cultural Affairs Council, says the activities help deepen the kids’ love for reading.
“The readings are really the heart of this. We really want to encourage everyone to go to all the readings that they can.”
Every year the festival starts with the unveiling of a statue honoring the work of that year’s featured illustrator, who’s usually in attendance.
For Winnie the Pooh’s 100th birthday organizers went all out to make this year’s festival extra special.
“When we decided that we were gonna focus on Winnie the Pooh for the festival and the fact that Winnie the Pooh is now in the public domain. So that enabled us to work with Steve Neves our wonderful sculptor."
Barnett says generous sponsors turned an ambitious idea into nine bronze sculptures inspired by Winnie the Pooh.
"We just kept getting such great support when we mentioned the Winnie the Pooh sculpture or the Tigger sculpture or the Owl. People would just come forward and said “yes I would love to sponsor that.” Because it’s a very expensive process the whole bronzing and creation. People just stepped up and because people kept saying yes, we kept on adding another sculpture here and another sculpture, that’s how we ended up with all of them.”
In the end sponsors helped them to add not just Winnie the Pooh, Christopher Robin and Piglet, but life-sized bronze statues of Tigger, Eeyore, Rabbit, Owl and Kanga and Roo — all in the Clear Fork Bank Storybook Garden, which is in the southwest lawn outside the Abilene Convention Center.
The festival spans several blocks of Abilene’s downtown—from the convention center to the railroad. All day children race between activities, parents take pictures of their kids with storybooks sculptures —and Winnie the Pooh characters greet visitors around every corner.
Everything is aimed at giving kids a chance to be hands-on, with lots of opportunities to engage their own creativity, including making birthday cards for the beloved bear. Skylar Young with the Abilene Cultural Affairs Council says the cards won't stay in Abilene —they'll become part of a special display in New York.
“This is our birthday card station here at CALF for 100 years of Winnie the Pooh and his friends. We’ve had a really cool opportunity with Penguin Random House to display the cards in the New York Public library. They’ve been really good to us with all things Winnie the Pooh.”
Winnie the Pooh's presence stretched across every corner of the festival. From story readings and crafts to marionette performances, nearly every activity centered on Pooh and his friends. Even the birds of prey demonstration at Frontier Texas! featured Owl for photo opportunities.
And even in the middle of hot June days in downtown Abilene families fully embraced the Winnie the Pooh theme. Sisters, Madilyn and Everleigh, along with their cousin London, shared some of their favorite moments from the day.
“I’m dressed up as Winnie the Pooh because that’s my favorite character. I’m dressed up as Eeyore. I’m dressed up as Piglet. Our nana put the pictures on. We pet puppies, we watched a puppet show, we made slime, we watched people read stories, we did art. I think my favorite thing was getting to do art and make slime. Is that a honey pot purse? Do you want some honey? Do you?"
The response was really heartening for the organizers and volunteers who not only poured thousands of hours of work into creating the four-day event — but anxiously watched the progress of downtown construction projects — some of which wrap up just in time for the festival. Beth Beam, the director of CALF, says the turnout was wonderfully overwhelming.
“We’ve had more people than ever this year and the day is not over. We’ve already surpassed by probably a thousand people our ticket sales from last year.”
And planners weren’t sure what to expect, because as temporary A-I data center workers fill local hotel rooms and short-term rentals—rates are higher than ever.
“We were on alert starting at the very beginning knowing that hotels were going to be iffy. That was on our radar back in Sept. We were ready to here from families and take it on. I haven’t heard anything crazy. Show how much families love CALF. We were pleasantly surprised that we still have as many people as we do with the way things in Abilene are right now. It’s so cool to see how many people are having fun and having a good time and enjoying the readings and finding new books that they want to take home with them. And people love Winnie the Pooh. Winnie the Pooh is the reason people are here this year. It’s just incredible."
For one weekend, downtown Abilene traded traffic for storybooks and transformed into the Hundred Acre Wood. Families stepped into Pooh's world, demonstrating that a century later, his stories still spark imagination and bring people together.