The Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association gathered in Denver at the Renaissance Hotel & Conference Center October 5–8 for its annual FallCon, during which booksellers from across the West and Southwest networked with one another and with authors, publishers, and others during three days of programming. On Monday morning, as is the tradition, FallCon kicked off with the Children’s Authors and Illustrators Keynote Breakfast. This year’s presentations, by six authors and one illustrator, touched on themes of accessibility, inclusion, censorship, and the freedom to read, resulting in a morning that inspired and energized a packed room of booksellers.
The first speaker was Theresa Howell, who talked about her picture book, Books on Bikes, co-written with F. Isabel Campoy, and illustrated by Brizida Magro (Clarion). The story follows Lia, who “reads upside down and around town” and makes her beloved books accessible to her community by transporting them on her bike.
Discussing real-life books-on-bikes programs, and how they inspired this picture book, Howell emphasized the importance of bicycle-powered mobile bookstores, saying that “they aren’t just transporting books: they’re transforming lives.” Howell noted that Lia, while a fictional character, represents “a new generation of readers”—as well as booksellers, going out into the community, rather than expecting people to come to them.
Describing Books on Bikes as “a call to action,” a way to engage one’s neighbors and start conversations, Howell concluded by pointing out that “sometimes the best way to inspire community is with two wheels and a basket full of books.”
Noting that she, like other children’s authors, has a responsibility to write of the world both as it is “and as it should be,” Sara Pennypacker insisted that the gulf between the two has widened, so when she writes, she focuses on three things: providing information; characters who are role models, even in small ways; “and the third thing is, kids really need us [authors]; they need people who believe in their characters, who believe them.”
Pennypacker explained that she kept those three points in mind while writing Lion’s Run, illustrated by Jon Klassen (Balzer + Bray, Feb. 2026), which is set in occupied France during World War II, against a backdrop of a program established by the Germans that initially encouraged the impregnation of Aryan-looking teenage girls, but expanded into the kidnapping of children in Nazi-occupied countries. Lucas, a delivery boy, joins the Resistance when he learns that the pregnant teenage girls in a maternity home in his village are forced to give up their babies for adoption.
“Our job as writers, Pennypacker concluded, “is to give information that is appropriate for that age group to process,” and that even a delivery boy in a French village can be a role model for others.
Tami Charles, accompanied by Bryan Collier, the illustrator of her picture book series, All Because You Matter, introduced the final volume in their trilogy affirming the value of Black lives, history, and culture, Together, United (Orchard). The series launched in 2020 with All Because You Matter, followed by We Are Here in 2023.
“Together, United is the culmination: together we can create something beautiful, we can create magic,” Charles said. The tale takes place on a school class trip to a planetarium, she explained, because such an excursion “can help us imagine that we’re part of something bigger,” and, Collier added, it “forces you to think about how small you are on the planet.”
Charles also praised booksellers for “not just putting a book in a child’s hands, but offering the gift of courage, the gift of resistance. “Stories and books are being banned, but you have the power to fight that,” she declared.
Jasmine Warga, author of The Claiming (Scholastic Press, Jan. 2026), the second volume in the Last Resort middle grade horror series launched by Erin Entrada Kelly last month, noted that she was writing in a new genre because she is the “unofficial president of the Erin Entrada Kelly fan club.” When Kelly asked her to write the second installment of tales set at an inn that’s a portal between the worlds of the living and the dead, Warga happily agreed to leave her comfort zone and write about a boy, Teddy, who is obsessed with ghosts. “The project was so much fun,” she said, “and it’s interactive: the reader can solve the mystery; and it’s accessible to readers of all abilities, which is important to me.”
Warga also has another, more traditional novel coming out next spring, The Unlikely Tale of Chase and Finnegan (Balzer + Bray, March 2026), a tale about a rescue dog and a cheetah who become friends. The message in this read, she said, is that “you don’t have to be perfect to be worthy of love.” She concluded by saying that the two books she had just presented “may seem wildly different, but at the same time, their messages are similar: finding belonging, finding home.”
Brandon Mull stepped up next to present the first volume in his new Guardians series, Forbidden Mountain (Labyrinth Road, Apr. 2026). Describing himself as a voracious reader as a child who loved The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Mull said he was desperate to go to Narnia. “I couldn’t go into another world,” he said, “so I started doing it in my head,” and became a writer. “I’ve been planning Guardians for 15 years,” he said. “It’s my first series that you spend the entire series in another world.”
The breakfast concluded with Shannon Hale, who read aloud from her new picture book, Holly Jolly Kitty-Corn, illustrated by LeUyen Pham (Abrams), the story of a cat and a unicorn who decorate a Christmas tree together. Closing the book, Hale told the booksellers that she was accused of being “a groomer and a pedophile” because of this book’s prequel, Itty Bitty Kitty-Corn. “Texas parents were outraged over a kid’s book about a kitten that wanted to be a unicorn,” she said. “A person on the [Katy, Tex.] school board said the main character wants to transform into something they’re obviously not, and that it was a transgender agenda.” The controversy erupted again in Texas last year, when a group of people protested Itty Bitty Kitty-Corn’s inclusion in a children’s book festival in Abilene, but they were outnumbered by those supporting it.
Hale insisted that she’d simply written about a kitten with a unicorn friend. “It’s up to the reader to take what they need out of it,” she said, “If they’re a trans kid who’s like, ‘I feel validated by this,’ hallelujah. But that is not the only purpose of books. The purpose of books is to be flexible and open so people can find themselves in it, whoever they are.”
Censorship is about control, Hale said, “And control always comes out of fear. If certain stories are [deemed] inappropriate, it’s saying that it’s dangerous to tell children to be you, no matter who you are. It’s dangerous to tell them you are precious, lovable, worthy of a story, because if you tell children they can be who they are, then you can’t control who they might become.”
Hale concluded by urging booksellers to “live in joy,” as it’s “the greatest rebellion” against fear. “Live in joy, despite everything,” she insisted, “because that’s how change happens.”
