To kick off National Library Week, the Booth Library will host its annual Edible Book Festival on Monday, April 9.

The Edible Book Festival will be open to the public for viewing and voting from 4 to 5 p.m., but the edible books will remain on display until 6:30 p.m. in the Marvin Foyer Room.

Ellen Corrigan, the organizer of this year’s Edible Book Festival, said this is the festival’s eighth year.

Corrigan, being a first-time organizer, is taking the opportunity to try different things.

“Organizing the Edible Book Festival for the first time has been exciting. As a past participant, I had some idea of what goes into planning the event,” she said.

Every year, the program varies, and the theme for this year is PEEPS, named after the marshmallow candy of the same name.

“The concept is to choose a theme—whether it is an ingredient, a literary genre, an author, a quote—that the festival participants can use as a starting point for generating their own ideas for an edible book,” Corrigan said. “I was discussing theme ideas with members of the National Library Week Committee and PEEPS got a positive response.”

“Looking over the list of past entries, certain books tend to show up again and again. For example, we’ve seen several ‘Very Hungry Caterpillar’ (entries) over the years—in fact, one year we had three caterpillars. It’s interesting to see the different ways people interpret and represent the same book,” Corrigan said.

In a bid to enhance flexibility, there will be no formal categories for this year’s festival. Winners will be determined by the People’s Choice and the Judges’ Choice. There will also be a few honorable mention awards given out.

There has been an average of about 25 entries in past years’ festivals.

“There has been many memorable entries over the years. One that comes to mind is Katie Jenkins’s ‘A Clockwork Orange.’ She made a round cake and decorated it to look like a clock but added working clock hands, which is what really made it interesting,” Corrigan said.

The festival is free and open to everyone on campus as well as people from the community.

The works submitted do not get eaten in the end because of hygienic reasons, since they are brought in pre-made and there are rules against that, Corrigan said.

She said it is a fun and interesting event with a lot of creativity.

“Making edible books can be really fun,” Corrigan said.

Registration forms are open until April 6 and are available on the Booth Library’s website.

Dolapo Adeyemo can be reached at 581-2812 or odadeyemo@eiu.edu.