The AJC Decatur Book Festival, which will roll over the town square on Labor Day weekend, has lined up just the kind of cookbook authors you expected and hoped they would. There's a grande dame of Southern cooking (Nathalie Dupree), a local boy made good (Watershed chef Scott Peacock) and a once and perhaps future television chef (Marvin Woods).

But the lineup of authors — all of whom will discuss their books and prepare recipes at the Decatur Cook's Warehouse demonstration kitchen — also includes a couple of ringers.

JOHN KESSLER ON FOOD AND MORE E-mail Kessler Related: • More on food and drink • Restaurant reviews and search More Kessler Start with basics at three Buford Highway eateries  Salted cod gives kids whiff of new world (and they like it)  Colorful pumpkins have multiple uses  An iffy food approach: There's a joke in here somewhere  In the end, a bit too much wing think going on  Nibble by nibble, great meal at fancy restaurant redefined  A little midcentury classic we'd hate to be without  Grandfather's old-world life remains a mystery  FESTIVAL PREVIEW • AJC Decatur Book Festival, Aug. 31-Sept. 2. Free. Decatur Square, West Ponce de Leon Avenue at Clairmont Avenue. 678-436-3237. For highlights, go to www.accessAtlanta.com and type AJC Decatur Book Festival into the events field.

How about a cookbook author who is attending the third grade in a Kennesaw elementary school?

Or maybe a fermentation guru who made his name on that, um, most beloved of dishes, sauerkraut?

The former, Max Nania, is in the third grade because he is, in fact, 8 years old and not because he has had his brain addled by too many cooking shows.

Yet the author of "Cooking With Max: 45 Fun and Kind of Messy Recipes Kids Can Make" (Little Five Star, $14.95) does indeed draw his inspiration from the Food Network.

"I like Emeril [Lagasse]," Max explains over the telephone after his piano lesson. "He's a cool chef, and he goes 'bam.' Plus, he has a band like me."

A band?

At this point Max's mother, Sienna, gets on the phone to explain that her husband and his blues band have backed him up when Max has done previous cooking demonstrations.

"They play 'the Funky Chicken' and 'Superstition,'" Max pipes in.

Sienna Nania says that all the recipes — including tie-dyed pancakes and super sport slushies — in the book are derived from Max's concoctions in the kitchen. At the book festival, he'll demonstrate "crazy cooking with peanut butter."

Homemade peanut butter, Max specifies.

Then it's on to the king of sauerkraut, Sandor Ellix Katz.

His mission came about by necessity. Staring down a bumper crop of cabbage in his home garden ("it was all ready at the same time!"), Katz began exploring ways to preserve the harvest.

Watery canned mush? Not for this guy.

"I've always had a passion for the sour flavors of fermented foods," explains Katz by telephone from his home in rural Tennessee. His first experiments led to a passion and eventually to the publication of "Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods" (Chelsea Green Publishing, $25).

Not only do fermented foods work as a digestive aid, Katz notes, but "there's a huge and growing scientific literature" that shows many healthful benefits of fermented foods, such as kombucha tea, yogurt, soy and fish sauce and pickles ranging from kimchi to sauerkraut.

Katz will demonstrate how to ferment summer garden vegetables.