Book it at the Free Library Festival

What do extraterrestrials and the Berenstain Bears have in common?

What about love-sick werewolves, Oprah Winfrey, and an awkward high school fencer named Aliera Carstairs?

No, these aren't guests for The View.

Don't think TV. Think books.

The Free Library Festival, Philadelphia's premier book celebration, will bring these and dozens of other book topics alive with author appearances, discussion panels, children's events, and an outdoor street fair, literary marketplace, and live music all day Saturday and Sunday at the Free Library on the Parkway.

Now in its fourth year, the festival will feature 60 regional and international authors, including Sapphire, whose powerful novel Push was the basis for the Oscar-winning film Precious; controversial biographer Kitty Kelley, who dishes the dirt in Oprah: A Biography; gospel singer Tina Campbell, who tells it like it is to teen girls in need of inspiration with Be U: Be Honest, Be Beautiful, Be Intentional, Be Strong, Be You!; as well as children's writers Judy Schachner, Andrew Clements, Matt Phelan, and Jane Yolen.

Event co-organizer Sara Goddard says Philly's festival may be young compared to other major book events around the country - the Miami Book Fair International is entering its 27th year and the Baltimore Book Festival its 15th - but it attracts a wide range of authors.

"We're still relatively new to the festival scene," she says, but the Free Library Festival "has the ability to deliver a big show and draw A-list authors, and a strong regional character."

Last year the festival drew 35,000 participants, a nice jump from the 25,000 who attended in its inaugural year, 2007.

Goddard believes that while the local area has a lively literary scene, including local book fairs in Collingswood and Chestnut Hill, it thirsted for an event that would draw together book lovers from the entire region.

Most of all it keeps alive the library's mission.

"You hear people's frustration and anger when their branch may be closed," Goddard says. "The FLF is about those same people . . . reconnecting with what a library really offers: discovery and and inspiration."

Don't worry, we haven't fogotten the extraterrestrials. They'll arrive, so to speak, Saturday with Paul Davies, who will discuss his 28th book, The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence, which argues that we need to mount an aggressive search for civilizations beyond our planet.

The renowned theoretical physicist finds it refreshing to speak to nonacademics.

"I think people are fascinated, a bit in awe of scientists. But the problem is, many scientists are not good communicators," he says. "I make it part of my mission to be accessible to the general public."

Aliera Carstairs, the awkward high school fencer, is the heroine of Jane Yolen's Foiled, which is written for readers ages 12 to 14. It's the first graphic novel by the 71-year-old prolific writer, author of 170 children's and more than 50 adult books, including the Pit Dragon series and Owl Moon.

The Berenstain Bears will be on hand Saturday at noon, as part of a parade of storybook characters including Curious George, Corduroy, Clifford, and Peter Rabbit.

Looking for literary fiction?

Chang-rae Lee, author of the best-selling Aloft, will read from The Surrendered on Saturday.

"The book concerns the impact of war on the minds and hearts of three characters, who come to know each other during the Korean War," says Lee, who teaches at Princeton University.

Poetry will be served all weekend at the Poetry Salon, with readings by Charles Bernstein, Michael Dickman, Sonia Sanchez, and Edward Hirsch.

On Saturday, eminent literary critic and Harvard scholar Helen Vendler will discuss Last Looks, Last Books: Stevens, Plath, Lowell, Bishop, Merrill, a study about how aging poets shift their writing style to reflect their mortality.

"It's easy to write a poem saying 'My body is failing and dying, yet my mind is still alive,' " Vendler says. "It's harder to show the co-presence of those opposing ideas through an actual change in style and syntax."

The lives, minds, and hearts of dogs will be discussed Sunday at a panel featuring canine experts Susannah Charleson, Alexandra Horowitz, and Michael Currie Schaffer, a former Inquirer staff writer.

Horowitz, who teaches cognitive science at Barnard, will talk about her study Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know.

"I tried to use this flurry of cognitive and behavioral research over the past dozen years to address my own questions as a [dog] owner," she says. Those include how dogs' "extraordinary sense of smell" so radically colors their experience that theirs is almost a different world than ours.

And the love-sick werewolves?

They moan, howl, and growl in Never Cry Werewolf, the latest supernatural thriller from Philly's best-selling horror, fantasy, and romance writer, L.A. Banks, who will participate Sunday in a panel with three fellow members of the local literary collective, Liars Club - Jonathan Maberry, Ed Pettit, and Dennis Tafoya.

"It basically deals with kind of a . . . paranormal civil war between the werewolf community versus Vampires versus The faie, you know fairies and elves," Banks says.

So is there much romance?

"Oh man, yeah!" she says laughing. "There are a lot of hot love affairs going on!"

The Free Library Festival and Street Fair & Literary Marketplace at the Free Library of Philadelphia, 19th & Vine Sts. (Both streets will be closed for the outdoor street fair.)

Hours: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday

Admission: Free

Information: 215-686-5322 or http://libwww.freelibrary.org/bookfestival/EndText