Lexicon and Tumblehome at the US Science and Engineering Festival

The 2nd USA Science and Engineering Festival enchanted and inspired visitors in Washington, DC last weekend, and I was there, representing both the Lexicon series and Tumblehome Learning.

A corner of the festival during setup, before the crowds

Six members of my family attended, along with 150,000 other visitors over the course of three days. Seven Tumblehome staff and all four of our authors also attended for at least part of the weekend.

Kids try out some activities

In our two combined booths, we set up posters, signs, and activities for Tumblehome Learning, the Land of Lexicon, and Morris Future Comics, the franchise that created our new graphic novel Venus: Daedalus One.  We gave away tattoo stickers and trilobite keychains.  At our main acitivity table, Peter Wong and Kristine ran a cycle of activities including making and painting plaster trilobites, experimenting with static electricity, and completing a flat circuit made of copper tape to make a buzzer sound.
At another table, kids examined fossils, real or fake, with a microscope that projected images onto a screen.  The kids could also examine tiny crystals of industrial diamonds and diamonds incorporated into the surface of silicon and other materials.

Fossils and diamond coatings.

Finally, at the front, kids and parents did Tangram puzzles from the Lexicon Villages event and did a simple experiment about heat transfer and thermal paper.

Rebecca helps a visitor with a heat transfer experiment

 Meanwhile, out the side of our booth we played a continuous loop of a slideshow and soundtrack for the first song of our upcoming Lexicon musical.  The song in called "Because Girls Can't Do Math."  Although the title is ironic, so many visitors got huffy at the very notion that we changed the title on the spot to "Because Girls Can('t?) Do Math."

A steady stream of visitors flowed through our booth all weekend, looking, playing, listening, signing up for more information, and buying. While kids did the activities, parents talked with our authors, Jeffrey Morris (author of Venus) and Michael Erb (author of Kelvin McCloud and the Seaside Storm).

Michael Erb (left) and Jeffrey Morris sign their books.

 The two activity kits and all four books available sold well, and visitors clamored for the two--Tumblehome Learning's The Furious Case of the Fraudulent Fossil and Scarletta's Ice Castle-- that are coming soon.

Owen checks out Ice Castle

  The festival itself was magnificent.  Where else can kids see a space capsule, climb into an F-16 jet,

take apart an iPad, learn physics and circus tricks together, extract DNA, walk through the Magic Schoolbus,

Visitors line up to enter the Magic School Bus

enter a Rubik's cube contest,

Crowds watching the Rubik's cube challenge

Besides and see the Mythbusters all in one day?  I had very little time to wander, but a did visit a few friends from the informal science world to see volunteers from 4H and the National Girls Collaborative Project running activities for younger kids.

Between manning the booth and visiting friends, I had a couple of author events to attend.  One highlight was participating on an evening author panel about communicating science through books.  Robin Cook of Coma and Outbreak fame, the creator of the medical thriller genre, delivered the keynote.  Other writers included the great kids' nonfiction writer Joy Hakim and rocket boy turned multi-genre author Homer Hickam.

Penny and Homer Hickam after the author panel

After Robin's talk, the six of us then sat on stage answering questions about how we came to write about science and our writing process.

Book signing after the author panel

I also gave a Featured Author talk Sunday morning.  Unfortunately, it was first thing Sunday morning, in a rather hard-to-find but huge room two floors away from the festival main action, so if my family hadn't been ranged in the front when I started, I would have felt pretty lonely.  Luckily, people trickled in as I spoke, and a decent audience gathered in time to see me use my Personal Assistant time machine to summon Roy Chapman Andrews, the paleontologist who served as the model for Indiana Jones.

A visit from Roy Chapman Andrews, aka Barnas Monteith

I also gave a Featured Author talk Sunday morning.  Unfortunately, it was first thing Sunday morning, in a rather hard-to-find but huge room two floors away from the festival main action, so if my family hadn't been ranged in the front when I started, I would have felt pretty lonely.  Luckily, people trickled in as I spoke, and a decent audience gathered in time to see me use my Personal Assistant time machine to summon Roy Chapman Andrews, the paleontologist who served as the model for Indiana Jones. Roy stormed onto the stage in a panic about the Mongolian raiders chasing him in a scene taken more or less straight from Barnas Monteith's Fraudulent Fossil.

Rhianon drops by her mother's book signing station

All this week the Tumblehome team has been recovering and following up from the fair.  We sent copies of the song and coupons for THL products to all who signed up for them.  We've begun entering our books on Amazon. We've established our warehousing and fulfilled new orders, updated our brochure and put the finishing touches on Fraudulent Fossil so it's ready for printing. We're already planning for a second run of Venus.

All in all, the festival was a wonderful place for the launch of a new science book and activity company.  It was also a joyful event, and when (if) it happens again, all of you should bring your favorite children and attend!