Mark Twain was an American wit like no other, willing and more than able in writing or in person to skewer the pompous and self-important, be they lying politicians, ham-fisted editors or petty tyrants on the local school board.
But one subject did tend to command his respect.
"When I am king," mused a character in his 1881 novel "The Prince and the Pauper," the people "shall not [only] have bread and shelter, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is worth little where the mind is starved."
That sentiment will be very much on display at the Key School next Saturday, where thousands of literature lovers will mingle with authors old and new - and commemorate the 100th anniversary of Twain's death - at the eighth annual Annapolis Book Festival.
Among the highlights of the day will be an hourlong panel discussion on the life and work of Twain, the author of 12 major books, thousands of shorter stories and essays, and more than 10,000 letters.
The festival, which is free and open to the public, might rival even the "Tom Sawyer" creator in its breadth of subject matter. "We'll have something for everybody," says Missy Attridge, co-chair of a committee that gathered 30 authors from across the nation who will lead talks on subjects from baseball and children's fiction to the Chesapeake Bay, parenting, and the changing face of global security.
C-SPAN will even be on hand to televise four seminars on public-policy matters. The cable channel will rebroadcast the shows several times as part of its Book TV series.
The festival, which organizers expect to draw about 3,000 visitors throughout the day, will be family-friendly, including folk and rock performances, Harry Potter games, a reading of Maurice Sendak's classic "Where the Wild Things Are" and even a book-loving clown for kids.
Grown-up book fans will have from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. to relish the ways in which good writing still nourishes the imagination a century after Twain's death in Redding, Conn., on April 21, 1910.
They'll have a choice of 13 panel discussions for adults and three book events for kids, where guest authors will talk of their work and field questions, in some cases leading discussions.
Visitors might have to map out a strategy to maximize their enjoyment, Attridge says. Some tend to come just to hear one author speak, she says; others will spend the whole day in a single classroom, taking in several sessions in a row; still others will choose to wander the campus during the day, picking and choosing from the menu of offerings.
If best-selling writers are your bag, there will be several choices, and a good seminar to visit might be the Thrillers & Chillers panel, where heavyweights like Jeffrey Deaver - author of "The Bone Collector," a 1997 blockbuster that was made into a hit film two years later - and Katherine Neville, whose "quest-adventure" books have been translated into 40 languages in 80 countries - will hold forth on character development and plot.
On the nonfiction side, ex-newspaperman Mark Kurlansky, the best-selling author of "Salt: A World History" and the about-to-be-released "The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macoris," will help lead two panels. One focuses on the world's water supply, the other on his most recent book, which is to hit stores nationwide Thursday.
Fascinated by human behavior? Attendees have many choices in the fiction and nonfiction categories. Ellen Weber Libby, a practicing Maryland psychologist whose book "The Favorite Child" explores a theory that parents in every family choose a "favorite child" for largely unconscious reasons, and that this choice has long-term implications on that child and his or her siblings. And Los Angeles journalist Ashley Merryman, who has collaborated for years with San Francisco author Po Bronson to re-examine the science of rearing children, will discuss their 2009 best-seller, "Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children," the focus of which is that many of our most common practices, however well-intentioned, are backfiring, largely because they're based on assumptions unsupported by scientific research.
"We think, for example, that praising kids for intelligence will lead them to more achievement, but it actually leads to less achievement and to even more cheating," Merryman says. She'll share thoughts on the subject in an afternoon panel, "Rethinking Parenting," just as she and Bronson have done on "Good Morning America," "Nightline" and NPR's "All Things Considered" during the past year.
Twain was known for placing wide-eyed juvenile characters into situations with grown-up lessons, and guest author Diana Peterfreund of Washington, D.C., has bridged a similar gap. Her five-novel Secret Society Girl series - including "Rites of Spring (Break)" and "Tap and Gown" - gave readers Amy "Bugaboo" Haskel, an Ivy League student who is invited to join a secret society. The books have earned praise from critics, who have called the series "witty and endearing" and "impossible to put down."
Last year, Peterfreund catapulted into a different genre. "Rampant" is about killer unicorns - "violent, venomous beasts that can only be killed by virgin girls descended from Alexander the Great," in a reviewer's words.
Like Twain, she found the childlike in the grown-up, and vice versa.
"I was inspired to write 'Rampant' when I discovered there were [many] facets of the unicorn legend that hadn't gotten enough airtime - dangerous unicorns, bloodthirsty unicorns," says Peterfreund, who will sit in on a five-author discussion on young-adult ficton. "It tied in so well with things I wanted to write about: action-adventure, strong women, society's pressures on teen girls, environmentalism.
"I think if you're truthful to your story, the audience, whether adult or teen, responds to that," she says.
Twain always was, whether describing a boy who watched the mourners at his own funeral or another who rafted down the Mississippi with a runaway slave.
Perhaps that's because his huge literary output was an extension of his profoundly impish personality.
He saw writing, he once said, as "a useful trade ... that with all its lightness & frivolity has one serious purpose, one aim, one specialty ... the deriding of shams, the exposure of pretentious falsities, the laughing of stupid superstitions out of existence."
That is according to panelist Robert Hirst, the editor of "Who Is Mark Twain?" - a new collection of 24 previously unpublished pieces. In researching his book, Hirst learned the author made those remarks while accepting an honorary degree from Yale University in 1888.
A professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Hirst has spent 42 years "doing what it takes to provide a complete scholarly edition of everything Twain wrote. ... That has entailed finding everything he wrote, which is literally everywhere."
He says he's about halfway finished with the project.
Fellow panelist Michael Shelden, who wrote the new biography "Mark Twain: The Man in White," says that to many, Twain is more than a literary figure. He's one of our national heroes.
"His books capture both the promise of American life and the dark underside of violence and corruption," Shelden says. "No one has understood the American character better than Twain."
It's the kind of legacy that keeps the "Tom Sawyer" author current and important, fans say, even so long after his death.
"He directed his humor at targets that are still with us, will probably always be with us, and that are much in need of the kind of ridicule he commanded," says Hirst. "He's still extraordinarily funny. And we don't laugh at things about which we're indifferent."
If you go What: Eighth annual Annapolis Book Festival
When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday
Where: The Key School, 534 Hillsmere Drive, Annapolis
Admission: free
For more information, and a full schedule of festival events, go to keyschool.org/key_community/ festival2010.asp