The Brooklyn Public Library Foundation hosted its eighth annual gala Thursday at the Central Library on Grand Army Plaza.

The event honored one of America’s finest sports writers, Roger Kahn, author of “The Boys of Summer”; the chairman and chief executive of Citigroup’s Global Consumer Group, Marjorie Magner; and children’s book illustrator Paul Zelinsky, best known for the book “The Wheels on the Bus.”

Mr. Kahn, who lived in a house on Lincoln Place as a child, recalled playing baseball on a field behind the library. “I used the library constantly – I gave quite a bit of money on overdue books,” he said. But books were not all he found there. “This is where you’d go if you wanted to meet a girl with style,” he said.

Ms. Magner, who came with her sister-in-law Ava and niece Stephanie, noted Citigroup’s funding of the Brooklyn Public Library’s business library.

The library most important constituency is children, said the executive director of the library, Ginnie Cooper.

To that end, she is lucky to have the support of superstar children’s book authors and illustrators living in the borough. “I love hanging out at the library; I got my start here, because I used to come here to work when my kids were young,” said Jon Scieszka, author of the “The Stinky Cheese Man” and, most recently, “Science Verse”.

His table (no. 15) was full of story-time stars, including author, illustrator, and animator Mo Willems (head writer of “Codename” on the Cartoon Network) and the illustrator of the Lemony Snicket books, Brett Helquist, who uses the 9th Street branch. Ted Thompson and Scott Seeley represented the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co., the store in Park Slope connected to a writing center for children.

“We all like children, we all like funny, and we all like chocolate,” said Mr. Willems, who decorated the table-number placard with a funny face and the tagline, “the coolest table.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Zelinsky told guests about the Brooklyn buildings they might recognize in his books, including Borough Hall and St. George Hotel, both blocks away from his home in Brooklyn Heights.

More than 400 guests attended the event, which raised $360,000 for the foundation.

Led by Howard Smith, the foundation provides private support to the library, the fifth largest library system in America. The foundation works with the library’s board of trustees, led by Lucille Cole Thomas. Pending projects include a new plaza and auditorium at the Central Library, renovations of the library’s 58 branches, and a visual and performing arts library in the BAM district.

Brooklyn’s builders and dreamers were in the room, such as the executive director of Health Plus, Thomas Early; the Independence Community Foundation’s top executives, Marilyn Gelber and Ben Esner; the executive director of the experimental theater group Irondale, Terry Greiss, and the president of the BAM Local Development Corporation, Jeanne Lutfy.

Guests left with a bagful of books, including “Awful Ogre’s Awful Day,” illustrated by Mr. Zelinsky, and “The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode” by Eleanor Estes.