The 10th annual Tucson Festival of Books was last weekend on March 10th and 11th. Like the last few years, it was held at the mall of the University of Arizona, which in case you don’t know, is the big grassy area between the U of A buildings.

While a Tucson festival may not seem like much, it is actually the third largest book festival in the country. Thousands of people come to the festival every year and of those thousands on Saturday and Sunday was Astronaut Scott Kelly and actress Jenna Fischer who spoke at the event.

The event was filled with food, entertainment and unsurprisingly, books! The event was heavily geared towards children and my four-year old brother was able to do things like build and launch a rocket, learn about animals and bugs, as well as read stories and play with other children.

Because I was there for work and on the Saturday afternoon that it rained, I wasn’t able to see as much as I would have liked, but I still had fun with my family and co-workers. I was able to watch an acrobat show off her amazing skills, learn some interesting things from the science vendors, try some delicious roasted almonds, and listen to a woman sing on stage.

My work tent was for KGUN 9 and we had a little area where children were able to come up and interact with a camera and a fake news cast so it looked like they were on TV doing the weather. The kids, as well as some of the parents, seemed to get a big kick out of seeing themselves on the big screen. Unfortunately, like I said before, we were rained out so the fun only lasted a few hours. We did keep up a little desk that had cardboard with the faces cut out so they could pretend to be anchors.

All in all, I definitely recommend the event to those in Tucson. It’s also free if you’re able to keep yourself from impulsively buying every book you see which I’ll admit, can be difficult.