Children’s Bookseller Receives National Award : Adventures for Kids owner Jody Fickes is recognized by a panel of industry professionals.

Each year only one children’s bookseller and one general or college bookseller are selected by a jury of book industry professionals to receive the prestigious Lucile Pannel Award sponsored by the Women’s National Book Assn.

This year, Jody Fickes, owner of Adventures for Kids in Ventura, was presented the award at the American Booksellers Assn. convention on Memorial Day weekend in Los Angeles.

Fickes received two pieces of original art created by book illustrator Don Wood and $500 for devising the children’s program, “Building Bridges: Celebrating Diversity Through Science.” She was cited by the judges for being “incredibly creative and thoughtful in seeing the needs of children and offering her customers so much more than just a retail transaction.” During the 1992 ABA convention, Adventures for Kids became the first children’s bookstore ever to receive the Charles Haslam Award for Excellence in Bookselling.

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Barnes & Noble Bookstore, 4360 E. Main St., will donate 10% of all sales made on Saturday to buy books for Ventura County’s new children’s shelter at Casa Pacifica.

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Noreen Ayers will sign “Carcass Trade” at 1 p.m. Saturday at Mysteries to Die For, 2940 Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks.

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It will be an enriching experience for readers of good fiction and writers with a work-in-progress to meet Anne Rivers Siddons, who will sign her new novel, “Downtown,” about a promising young writer, at 2 p.m. Sunday in Chaucer’s Bookstore, 3321 State St., Santa Barbara.

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Youngsters ages 8 to 11 can learn to write books for children in Joan Prestine’s class, which begins at 10 a.m. Monday and continues through Friday at Ventura College. The fee is $45. Call 654-6459.

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There are plenty of humorous and surreal excursions by noted poets, short-story writers and artists in the current issue of the literary magazine Bakunin, according to editor Jordan Jones of Simi Valley. This edition also includes a letter and poem by William Stafford, considered one of America’s greatest contemporary poets, which he submitted to the magazine just before his death in August, 1993. Bakunin, which is dedicated to “the dead Russian anarchist in all of us,” will sponsor a poetry evening at 8:30 Monday at the Vampyre Lounge Cafe, 655 E. Los Angeles Ave., Simi Valley. The featured poets are Bill Mohr, Denise Dumars and Nancy Ellis Taylor. Call 526-8900.

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Donna Hilbert will read from her book “Deep Red” at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the monthly poetry reading in Barnes & Noble Bookstore, 4360 E. Main St., Ventura.