Who says Las Vegans don’t read? Who, besides pundits, critics and naysayers, that is? You couldn’t prove it by the last two months here in southern Nevada. First there was the One Book Henderson movement, in which an entire community embraced a single book during the month of October. Then came the seventh-annual Vegas Valley Book Festival in early November, encompassing three days and more than 100 authors, book signings, readings, workshops, panel discussions, exhibitions, children’s literature programs and special events. The festival’s mission is to celebrate the written, spoken and illustrated word, and it does exactly that.

“This was our best year ever,” says Georgia Neu, southern Nevada program director for Nevada Humanities, the statewide nonprofit organization that created and coordinates the festival. “We had a real breakthrough, especially in terms of collaboration. We couldn’t present an event of this magnitude on our own. Our role is to bring the community and special interest groups together.”

The partners Neu speaks of are some of our area’s heaviest hitters: the City of Las Vegas Office of Cultural Affairs, the Las Vegas/Clark County Library District, Black Mountain Institute, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada Public Radio, Barnes & Noble, Target and many more. If the 2008 event was the best ever, that’s high praise indeed, especially considering the high-powered writing talent the festival has featured in years past: Tom Robbins, John Irving, Walter Mosley and Chuck Palahniuk, to name a few.

Neil Gaiman, author of illustrated novels “Beowulf” and “Stardust,” as well as the “Sandman” comic book series, served as the keynote speaker at the Clark County Library (known to locals as “the Flamingo Library”). Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend this event because – shameless self-promotion alert! – my firm, Imagine Marketing, received a Nevada Entrepreneur Award from the publication In Business Las Vegas that night. But afterward, I spoke to Karen Wickander, managing editor of Online Nevada Encyclopedia, who had flown down from Reno especially for the Gaiman presentation.

“Neil was awesome,” says Wickander, who describes herself as a huge fan but not quite a stalker. “The theater, which seats 400, was standing room only. People from 5 years old to 80, but mostly under 40. He spoke for two hours, including the Q and A, then stayed and signed books for another hour. And he didn’t just autograph the books, he drew personal pictures for everyone.”

Those demographics make the event organizers particularly happy. “The more diverse, the better,” says Neu.

The first program I attended was a panel discussion called “The Mystery/Thriller in the Digital Age” – a good thing too, since I was on the panel, along with Jay MacLarty (author of the “The Courier” series) and Stephen Grogan (“Vegas Die”). The panel took place on a Friday afternoon in the gymnasium of the newly remodeled historic 5th Street School, in the heart of downtown Las Vegas. (For you trivia buffs, 5th Street was the original name of Las Vegas Boulevard, way back in the day.)

The discussion drew roughly 30 people, with topics ranging from Amazon’s revolutionary Kindle wireless portable reading device to Web-based viral book marketing (one of my specialties). MacLarty spoke about using voice recognition software to speed up the writing process, while Grogan talked about online communities trying to decipher the clues scattered throughout his novel that lead to a hidden dagger worth $25,000. After the discussion, the three of us stayed to sign copies of our books. Appropriately, the table provided by the festival was covered by a green felt craps layout.

On Saturday night, the festival ended on a high note with closing speaker Michael Chabon, author of “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” “Wonder Boys” and “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union.” Chabon, who bridges literature and pop culture, was awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for “Kavalier & Clay.” With his unruly mop of black hair and matching stubble complemented by a well-worn sport coat, jeans and sneakers, he looks like an author right out of central casting. Soft-spoken yet passionate, he graciously met 60 or so invited guests at the Foundations Building on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, campus before speaking to a packed house at the Clark County Library Theater.

Chabon’s presentation, delivered earnestly and eloquently, was titled “Conquering the Wilderness: Imaginative Imperialism and the Invasion of Legoland.” For well over an hour, he held the audience spellbound as he spoke of the joys of his childhood, losing himself in imaginary adventures in the woods behind his Maryland home, “a world without parents” and how completely times have changed for today’s generation of children.

Decrying today’s structured childhoods, the fenced and safe backyards, the security cameras, organized sports, and Halloween in malls and high school gyms, he referred to Chuck E. Cheese’s and Discovery Zone as “jolly internment centers” and to Disney animated films as “butlers, serving the child’s every need.”

“Kids’ lives are controlled and regimented to the quarter hour,” he said. “There is no time or place left for the imagination.” Commenting on free-range chickens, who spend so much of their early years in cages that they are afraid to venture into the sun and wind, he said, “My kids are free-range children.”

And yet, Chabon says, there is hope – in the form of Legos. The old Legos came in two shapes, squares and rectangles, and just six colors. The instructions were suggestions and so open-ended that children could let their creativity run wild. Today’s versions are so sophisticated and predetermined that kids can build only one finished product. The directions look like schematics from some authoritarian toy factory.

“Luckily, kid’s lawless imaginations save the day,” Chabon said. At his house, all the Legos from all the sets go into a junk drawer. His children pull out the random pieces and force them together, making hybrids like starships with ichthyosaur flippers. “The crunching noises are the sounds of creativity itself,” Chabon said with a father’s pride and approval. “It’s the aesthetic of the Lego drawer.”

The same can be said for the Book Festival itself; its creativity flows from a convergence of free thinkers and unbounded genres. As Richard Hooker, senior specialist for the City of Las Vegas Office of Cultural Affairs, says, “It’s a simple premise: Bring together the people who write books and the people who read books.”

It’s a premise that is obviously working.