Kristi Yamaguchi’s Family Literacy Festival returns to San Jose next Saturday, September 5, bringing hands-on reading activities, celebrity story readings and family entertainment to the Children’s Discovery Museum for its fourth year running. Tickets cost $20 to $22 and include museum admission, with the event running from 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM in downtown San Jose.
The featured guest this year is Mychal Threets, an award-winning Bay Area librarian who now hosts the revived children’s program Reading Rainbow on PBS, according to The Mercury News. Known to many as Mychal the Librarian, Threets built his reputation over more than a decade working in the Solano County Library system in Fairfield, rising to supervising librarian before stepping down in March 2024, and he was named one of 10 national honorees for the American Library Association’s I Love My Librarian Award in December 2023, as Hoodline previously reported.
Threets’ appearance carries extra weight this year given his recent openness about mental health. Last Sunday, he posted on Instagram that he had placed himself on a five-day psychiatric hold, writing, as per The Mercury News, “I am not better, I’m getting help to be better.” Hoodline covered his disclosure in depth in a piece detailing his Fairfield roots after his hold, connecting his advocacy for mental health awareness to the same public library work that made him a household name for reading.
A Foundation Built on Third-Grade Reading
Yamaguchi, the 1992 Olympic figure skating gold medalist, founded the Always Dream Foundation in 1996 to promote early childhood literacy and expand underserved children’s access to books and family reading support, per U.S. Figure Skating. The foundation points to research showing that children who fail to read proficiently by the end of third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school, underscoring the urgency behind the festival’s mission. Yamaguchi has also built a career as a children’s author herself, penning the New York Times best-selling picture book Dream Big, Little Pig! in 2011 and donating a portion of the proceeds to literacy programs…