Look, raising a teen is tough. You know, it's always been hard to be a teenager and it's always been hard to raise a teenager.

I think a lot of parents feel like their kid has broken up with them.

But this school year can be different, with Life Kids guide on supporting your teenager.

Listen to the Life Kit podcast from NPR. Book festivals are special events where authors are celebrities and audiences are bookworms ready to nerd out among our own.

Every year more than 100 of these festivals take place nationwide.

One of the largest is in the nation's capital, hosted by the world's biggest

library, the Library of Congress. Today we're taking you to the National Book Festival,

which happened on August 24th in Washington DC.

At the opening ceremony, presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin

spoke about how as a child books helped her bond with her sick mother.

I suggested we read alternating paragraphs.

She hesitated at first, embarrassed by her slurring,

but gradually she looked forward to the routine

as we settled down to read aloud for a few hours every day after school

drawing us closer together than ever before.

The toll of her illness proved too much however.

The following year she suffered a massive heart attack and died in her sleep.

It is hard to realize that she was part of my life for less than a decade and a half,

and yet the love of books and the love of libraries that she instilled in me has become the anchor of my life.

We hear more of the best moments from the 2024 National Book Festival, including from authors

Eric Larson, Tamron Hall, and Rebecca Yarrows after the break.

I'm Jen White. You're listening to the 1A podcast where we get to the heart of the story.

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