The Silver Unicorn Kids Graphic Novel Festival

See the official Silver Unicorn festival website! 

Click here to register for free for the 2024 Kids Graphic Novel Festival! Not only is registration free, but each party that pre-registers will receive a free tote bag when they check in at the Festival. So register today! We will have a third stage this year, thanks to 2024 Festival partner Danny's Place! There will once again be a stage inside the store and outside the store, as well as an author tent. To accomodate free-flowing pedestrian traffic between the bookstore and the third stage at Danny's Place, Spruce St. will be closed to vehicle traffic between Mass. Ave. and Arlington St. Free parking will be available at the Gates School and the upper lot of the Parker Damon Building, and the Town of Acton will once again be providing a free shuttle bus from the parking lots to the Festival. In addition to the authors and illustrators presenting at this year's contest, we will have three of our favorite creators hosting each of the three stages -- Maddie Frost, Mark Hoffmann, and Jarrett Lerner! See more on them below. ... Design Your Own Cover Contest We will once again host the Design Your Own Cover Contest! Are you the next great graphic novel cover artist? Well, there's only one way to find out! In the run up to the contest, children ages 0-12 are encouraged to submit their own drawing of what they think a great graphic novel cover would be. It could be their version of a published graphic novel, or something totally original that they made up! Either way, we want to see their vision. And there will be prizes in the form of Silver Unicorn gift cards for the winners, as chosen by our panel of judges -- $250 for first place, $100 for second place, and $50 for third place. All children who enter the contest will get a $5 gift card to the store, but only those who turn it in by our submission deadline of April 14th will be considered for the prizes. You can submit your cover in one of two ways -- hand it to us in person at the store, or email us an attachment to info@silverunicornbooks.com, with the heading "Design Your Own Cover Contest." The contest is also limited to people who live in the general radius of Acton. One entry per child. Seeing the creativity of our budding artists in training was one of the true delights of last year's Festival. Like last year, our lead judge will be Rebecca "Tay" Taylor, Editorial Director of Inklore Books. Local author and illustrator Jarrett Lerner will also judge. ... In an effort to step up our game this year, we recruited Festival and store favorite Gale Galligan to design our Festival poster. And my oh my, is it a sight to behold! Gale is the absolute best, and you should read all of their books! If you love this poster as much as we do, stay tuned, we may be selling the poster at the Festival!