I’ve been selling books for 13 years. And in those years I’ve helped hundreds, maybe thousands, of people find the books they’re looking for. Sometimes they know what they want, but more often than not they just know they heard about it on NPR and really have no idea what the title is. But they think they do. They cling to their ideas, often repeating the same phrase over and over again, hoping that on the tenth hearing of it, suddenly, I’ll understand what they’re talking about.

A loose collection of words is always not enough information for the bookseller to guess what book you’re talking about. I once had a woman say, in all seriousness, "It’s about sisters, two-word title and the first word is," wait for it, yes, "The." She actually said, "The," like she had bestowed the Holy Grail on me. I looked at her and said, "Seriously? ‘The’?" After extracting more information from her we realized she wanted Jodi Piccoult’s My Sister’s Keeper.  Three word title, no "The." Happens all the time.

For kids’ books we get a lot of enactments. When grown men start hopping around because they can’t remember Peter Rabbit, I pretty much love my job. Goodnight Moon brings lots of great examples, "You know the one everyone has." "The one with the room."  I love how everyone mispronounces Roald Dahl and calls him Ronald. They say, "You know that giant orange book by Ronald Dahl." Series books prove to be a challenge to everyone because they can so often get confused with other series books. Just today, in fact, with the release of the final Percy Jackson book by Rick Riordan, The Last Olympian, I got permutations of Percy’s Olympics, "You know, the one all the kids want" and finally one poor, struggling parent asked for "Artemis Olympics."

Bless our customers for trying so hard and for their goodnatured patience as we try to find the right book for them. My favorite all-time mangled title was "Jesus’s Feet." The customer kept repeating it with more urgency every time, "Jesus’s Feet. It’s Jesus’s Feet. It’s a bestseller, you know, Jesus’s Feet. " Well, I looked for that and then it occurred to me that she wanted Walking the Bible. Once we hit on that, the customer and I had a great laugh.

So, bring me your mangled, your botched, your half-heard titles while taking the kids to soccer and I’ll do my best to decipher your code and together we’ll eventually get you Girl with a Pearl Earring, not "Dutch girl turned to the side."

Periodically, I’ll post some of the doozies I hear, but please share with me some of the great mangled titles you’ve heard.

As booksellers, we see and hear it all the time: that gasp of recognition, the soft "Ohhh!," the excited "Oh my gosh!" when a grownup encounters a long-lost friend in the form of a book. To witness a gruff 65-year-guy get mushy about Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel, or a grandmother reminisce about The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, or a mom or dad sharing one of their own old favorites with their brand-new children — these are some of the small moments that make being a children’s bookseller the best job on the planet.

Customers love the real deal, the books that touched a chord in their own childhood hearts and still manage to be favorites with each new generation. When we opened our store in 1996, we wanted to make sure that books with enduring appeal had priority on our shelves. Let other stores carry the movie and TV tie-ins we didn’t have space for; we would always be a place you could find Harry the Dirty Dog and The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet. And for the most part* by far, that approach has paid off. (*I admit we’ve had to beef up our superhero tie-in selection, or risk disappointing a lot of little boys.)

But for every worthy book we love that lasts through the decades, we’ve also seen others come and go. There were some individual titles that sparked back into life — Wende Devlin’s charming How Fletcher Was Hatched — and then died out again. In our 12 bookselling years, the marvelous Melendy series by Elizabeth Enright has been in and out of print a few times—currently in print, thanks to Macmillan’s Square Fish imprint. There have been great re-releases of books by Astrid Lindgren, Don Freeman, Eleanor Estes and Ezra Jack Keats, among others. Now that they’re back, I want them to stay! And there’s the rub — those books have to move, just as newer books must sell to earn their place in warehouses. But they generally have smaller promo budgets to back them, and many publishers are still looking for ideal ways to harness the relatively inexpensive power of the Internet to reach the school and library markets.

Back when I had eyes bigger than my stomach (must have been a LONG time ago, ha), I imagined starting a small publishing company to bring back some golden oldie favorites. I wished — no, yearned — for certain titles to find their way back into print: Ruth Carlsen’s delightful Mr. Pudgins, Scott Corbett’s entire Trick series, the Ruth Chew chapter books, and many more —all perfect for those insatiable new seven- to nine-year-old readers. To that end, several years ago, I started a thread on the Child_Lit listserv, asking those fine folks which books they’d like to see back in print. The responses poured in; I still have a thick file of replies from teachers, librarians, parents, and other booksellers.

Top requested titles? The Mummy Market, aka The Mother Market in the U.S (pictured at right) and the Ruth Chew books. Though my small publishing dream took a backseat to the bookstore, fortunately, there are many publishers, large and small, bringing books back into print. And so my next best bet is to harangue, cajole, urge, and plead for a few more kind, sharp-eyed, promo-savvy publishers to see the magic in these books, whose popularity and worthiness has already been proven, and whose readers are today’s Baby Boomer older parents. Boomers, as we know, do not shy away from nostalgia; nor do Gen X-ers.

 And so now would be seem to be the perfect time to capitalize on all that nostalgia we Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers are so fond of. There are at least 78 million of us, and we want those happy memories, even at a cost. Entrepreneur.com’s June 2008 online issue had an article about this market for our palmy pasts, noting that "…[T]wo things seem remarkable about the current craze for nostalgia. First, it’s likely to get even bigger as 78 million baby boomers with $2.5 trillion in spending power grow older and more wistful for the "golden days" of their youth. If consumers look back most fondly on their early 20s, as some research suggests, then aging boomers should drive a renaissance of all things 1960s-related. Even more noteworthy is this: Younger people seem to be just as nostalgic. Sprott found that his research participants responded to nostalgic advertising themes even though their average age was only 21. And those folks who turn out for a Play Date evening of Chutes and Ladders? They tend to be in their peak earning years, not their golden years."

So publishers, hear our plea! Scan your archives for the true gems that deserve a second chance. Bring them out and then let everyone know about them! And please let them build their audience more slowly than your frontlist titles. I know there are obstacles. Backlist, even brand-new backlist, isn’t as sexy as the "great new thing," from a marketing standpoint. Therefore, promotional budgets are small. Rights can be a problem to track down and obtain, and might explain why some series are available in part but not in full. And I’m sure there are other considerations, too, about which I know nothing. But with the kinds of relatively free advertising opportunities available online (websites, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), and the word-of-mouth power of blogs, I’d think a campaign targeting tech-savvy teachers, librarians, booksellers, and baby boomers could help drum up the volume of sales needed to keep these books alive. Or consider bringing them back as P.O.D. titles, but with terms that we smaller stores (who will be handselling them like crazy) can afford.

One important note: covers are vital. Most wouldn’t need an update—you don’t want to lose that nostalgic thrill of recognition on the part of your buyers—but others might need a visual facelift. Look at the success that Quentin Blake’s re-illustrated covers have had on the Edward Eager and Roald Dahl series. Since 1996, I have been hoping for a similar revitalization of most of the E. Nesbit covers. (Side note: I still dearly miss Nancy Eckholm Burkert’s edition of James and the Giant Peach, and while I like Blake’s paperback art for Half Magic, I am happy for the original N.M. Bodecker art on the hardcover edition. I think there’s a place for both versions in the marketplace.)

Later this week, I’ll be doing a post on upcoming releases of back-in-print books and the publishing houses that specialize in them. In fact, this will be a recurring theme in the ShelfTalker blog.

Readers, what books would you LOVE to see back in print? Booksellers, which ones do you just know you could handsell? Teachers and librarians, which out-of-print books are you dying to have back in your classrooms, and what’s the best way for us to let you know about them?

Here’s the trick to posting a comment: you may have to try several times, no kidding, but it will eventually go through. It’s that blasted code you have to enter; I try using ALL CAPS until it goes through.  Also, the comment will always cut off after a double quotation mark " — so use single quote marks ‘ instead of doubles, and you should be fine.

I promised a final Bookish Breakfast Cereal Contest wrap-up, and at long last here it is! As previously mentioned, Gareth and I narrowed the entries down to two finalists: Grape Nuts of Wrath (submitted by Erin McInnis, Nancy Mills and John Hamilton); and Robert Frosted Flakes (submitted by sflax and WouldBe).

From there I said we’d choose one winner, and we… sort of did. First, Gareth did sketches of the concepts we came up with for both cereal boxes. Those looked like this (click to view larger):

From there we tried to think like marketing pros and decide which cereal name we liked best, based on which really seemed like it would work as a cereal concept. (We basically took THIS approach because by any other approach we liked both suggestions equally!)

Thinking this way Gareth said he’d vote for Robert Frosted Flakes because he thought it was useful to have a mascot. (Obviously he parodied Tony the Tiger here, because Tony is, after all, the official Frosted Flakes mascot.)

Image-wise, I think the art Gareth created (milk being poured into a [dust] bowl) is funnier, but I would up voting for Robert Frosted Flakes too, but only because the marketing slogans/box text I coined for that one made me laugh harder than the ones I came up with for Grape Nuts of Wrath.

As you probably noticed above, for Robert Frosted Flakes, I thought Robert the Tiger (Tony’s long lost brother?) could be saying, "Whose bowl this is I think I know…"

For Grape Nuts of Wrath the best I could up with was "Put more than dust in your bowl!" or "Tired of dust? Fill your bowl with Grape Nuts of Wrath!" or "Turn your Dust Bowl into a Grape Nuts of Wrath Bowl!" Looking back maybe we could have just made Tom Joad the mascot for this cereal and had him spouting one of these little slogans, but… that seems almost more tragic than funny.

In the end, Gareth chose to do a cereal box design for Robert Frosted Flakes and spent about two hours attempting to create the art digitally, so that it would have flat color (like cereal boxes do) and look really, well, commercial and "cereal-box-like." What he got for his trouble is a lot of frustration — enough so that I wound up saying, "It’s not worth it! Just break out the watercolors!" WHICH he did, with these results:

Ta da!

Okay, maybe that wasn’t as fancy a finished product as you were hoping for, but I hope you’re still plenty entertained.

And now for some wacky cereal-related trivia… Do you KNOW who created the original design for Kellogg’s mascot Tony the Tiger? Martin Provensen!! WHO KNEW?? (Whoever wrote the Provensens’ entry on Wikipedia is who.) I stumbled on that fact while I was looking up something about Alice Provensen — AFTER Gareth had already re-designed Tony the Tiger as Robert. Weeeeeeeeeeird. Also weird is the fact that Tony once had a family. Yep. There was a Mrs. Tiger. AND a daughter named Antoinette. I hadn’t a clue.

And while we’re on the cereal subject, note that the deadline for the Cheerios Spoonful of Stories Children’s Book Contest is July 15, 2009. (Thanks to Fuse #8 for that link!) As the contest rules state, "One (1) Grand Prize of $5000 cash will be awarded. In addition to the cash prize, the Grand Prize winning story submission will be offered to a reputable Children’s Book Publishing company for possible future publication." The rules also state that publication is not guaranteed, but hey, when is it ever?

I know many of you have been sitting there coming up with some very creative marketing schemes and slogans for both Grape Nuts of Wrath AND Robert Frosted Flakes. Please entertain the rest of us by sharing them!

Today’s post is in honor of the First Buy Indie Day brought to us by the folks at IndieBound.  A great idea whose time has come. Everyone is encouraged to buy a book at their local independent bookseller on May 1st.

In honor of this day I wanted to share an anctedote from my dog’s vet appointment Wednesday. Poor little Inky had been struggling with some stitches that he scratched off, and was now dealing with six staples in his neck. These staples and his very vigorous left hind foot necessitated him wearing one of those Elizabethan cones around his head for two weeks. After a day of the cone, it wasn’t funny anymore, it was just plain sad. So I was practically bouncing into the vet’s office late on Wednesday for staple removal and freedom from the cone, eager to get my happy little dog back.

Well, the vet wanted to share a story with me. He’s talking and *not* taking the staples out. Internally, I’m tapping my foot, and he can sense my impatience. He continues, saying, "You’ll like this story." I am dubious at best.

It turns out his ten-year old son bought a friend a gift card to the Flying Pig. As the birthday boy was opening presents, there were some, "Oh that’s cool," when the Wii game got opened. Someone thought the soccer ball "pretty decent." But when this kid opened his last present, the $20 gift card to the Flying Pig, the kids went nuts, all saying variations of "Oh my God, that’s the coolest store." "I love that place." "You can get the best books there." The birthday party then turned into a book group, with the kids talking about what they’ve been reading that they liked, and what they were looking forward to reading this summer. And helping their friend make a list of books he could get with his gift card.

With the staples still in the dog’s neck, I was heartened that the best part of this boy’s party wasn’t the cool gizmo, it was the prospect of books and talking about them with his friends. Just know that for every story like this booksellers hear, there are far more that we don’t. We do important work, and there’s nothing that makes me happier than a bunch of kids sitting around talking about books.

Happy Buy Indie Day!

Several years ago, I saw a mesmerizing documentary on PBS about an eight-month collaboration (from November 1998 to June 1999) between Maurice Sendak, Arthur (Hey, Al) Yorinks, and the dance troupe Pilobolus. The dance was inspired—at least on Sendak’s part—by the true story of a fake "work camp," Terezín, built by Nazis to fool the international world into thinking that interned Jews were happy, healthy, productive, even artistically fulfilled, citizens. (More on that in a moment.)

I loved this film so much I wanted to see it again right away, but I hadn’t recorded it, and this was back in the early 2000s when semi-obscure documentaries were not widely available. "Last Dance" became my "lost chord" of films, the first title I looked for when I joined Netflix years ago, the movie I Googled whenever I had a hankering to revisit the creative genius and collisions of two brilliant, obsessive artistic forces. Back then, I was out of luck. But now—now, you lucky newcomers among us!—the film is back. Ten years later, you can see this film, evocative as the day it was released, on Netflix, either through the mail on DVD or right this minute (if you’re a Netflix member) via live streaming on your computer.

"Last Dance," directed by PBS filmmaker Mirra Bank, is as much about the head-butting and breakthroughs inherent in collaborative work as it is about the resulting performance piece. Maurice Sendak, consummate storyteller and then-co-director with Yorinks of The Night Kitchen Radio Theater, was accustomed to using art, words, actors, and voices to bring stories to life. Pilobolus, on the other hand, was accustomed to an almost opposite process: dancers and choreographers first create interesting movements and body shapes, and then find the story that grows out of them.

The push-and-pull is fascinating to watch, especially because the work evolves despite (and perhaps because of) the artistic conflict. At one point, Pilobolus’s Jonathan Wolken casually mentions that he is not wedded even to the theme of the Holocaust—which, as anyone familiar with Maurice Sendak’s work will anticipate, is nearly a breaking point for Sendak and Yorinks. Fortunately, a story both consistent with and different from their original vision slowly blooms as the dancers begin to use movement to create characters. One dancer in particular, Otis Cook (pictured at right in a screen capture from "Last Dance"), is stunning, almost other-worldly, in his development of a hunched and twisted, yet sinuous and powerful, dark presence in the vignette.

The dance, eventually titled "A Selection," premiéred in 1999, to mixed reviews. You can judge it for yourself; much of the performance is included at the end of "Last Dance."

Sendak also collaborated on another project with the same theme, this time working with Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner. Kushner wrote the libretto and text and Sendak created the sets (example from the Berkeley Repertory Theatre performance is at left) for "Brundibar," based on a children’s opera composed in 1938 by Hans Krása, a Czech Jewish musician whose work was performed at Terezín before his final, fatal transport to Auschwitz.

Krása had actually composed the score for his opera as a free man and rehearsed it with boys in a Jewish orphanage in Prague before political turmoil interrupted the project. The orphans eventually performed it in 1941, but without Krása; by then, he had been deported to Terezín. When many of the children from the orphanage were also transported to Terezín, Krása used smuggled fragments of the musical score to reconstruct and adapt his opera for the camp, where it became part of a Nazi propoganda film. (The black-and-white photo above, owned by the Jewish Museum in Prague and found on the Terezín Memorial website, shows the children’s choir depicted in the film, "Theresienstadt.")

Brundibar means "bumblebee" in colloquial Czech, and Krása’s opera told the story of two children who manage to outwit a greedy, malicious bully with the help of a few wise animals and a multitude of fellow schoolchildren. The Nazi camp leaders didn’t seem to recognize the subversive irony of this production with a message about strength in numbers and good triumphing over evil, but the children (audience and performers alike) enjoyed the rare measure of hope and strength and solidarity the opera brought, even if briefly. The opera was performed 55 times in the camp with a cast that continually changed as children were shipped out to their various fates at Auschwitz and beyond.

One survivor, Ela Weissberger, played the cat in the production; her memories of that time are recounted in The Cat with the Yellow Star: Coming of Age in Terezín (co-written with Susan Goldman Rubin; Holiday House). Another survivor, Zuzana Justman, directed an award-winning documentary about the experience, called "Voices of the Children" (which, sadly, doesn’t seem to be available for viewing). And there’s an extraordinary book, I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children’s Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp, 1942-1944 (Schocken), that was the basis for a play. (Odd coincidence: 27 years ago, my high-school friend Angela Price directed me in this play; I played Irena Synkova, a Terezín teacher who defied the Nazis by giving the children the gift of artistic expression, with contraband paper and paints, and songs. Yet another example of the way our lives circle around and around and connect up to themselves again, isn’t it?)

Brundibar in book form became Sendak’s third and final iteration of this Holocaust story, although where Maurice Sendak is concerned, there is never an end to the theme of good and evil wrestling against a backdrop of political corruption, or even wrestling within ourselves.

In a 2004 interview with Bill Moyers, he said,

"I was watching a channel on television. And they had Christa Ludwig who was a great opera singer…. And then, she had a surprising interview at the end of the concert where… [the interviewer] said, ‘But, why do you like Schubert? You always sing Schubert.’ And he sort of faintly condemned Schubert. ‘I mean, he’s so simple. He’s just Viennese waltzes.’ And she smiled. And she said, ‘Schubert is so big, so delicate, but what he did was pick a form that looked so humble and quiet so that he could crawl into that form and explode emotionally, find every way of expressing every emotion in this miniature form.’ And I got very excited. And I wondered, is it possible that’s why I do children’s books? I picked a modest form which was very modest back in the ’50s and ’40s. I mean, children’s books were the bottom end of the totem pole. We didn’t even get invited to grownup book parties at Harper’s…. And you were suspect the minute you were at a party, "What do you do?" "I do books with children." "Ah, I’m sure my wife would like to talk to you." It was always that way. It was always. And then when we succeeded, that’s when they dumped the women. Because once there’s money, the guys can come down and screw the whole thing up which is what they did. They ruined the whole business. I remember those days. And they were absolutely so beautiful. But, my thought was… that’s what I did. I didn’t have much confidence in myself… never. And so, I hid inside, like Christa was saying, this modest form called the children’s book and expressed myself entirely."

And this is where I think Sendak and Pilobolus finally found their common ground: in a form—the human body or a picture book—so seemingly humble and quiet, but so ready to explode emotionally. As Sendak says in "Last Dance": "You make the whole thing up anyway. You sit there, they sit there, we’re all making it up…. So if you’re making it up, make it up good."

If you want to know more about Terezín and Brundibar, or children and the Holocaust, PBS has a great website here. And the transcript of the interview with Bill Moyers is here.  And just for Sendakian fun, if you haven’t seen it yet, check out the trailer for the upcoming live-action movie of Where the Wild Things Are. I’m cautiously optimistic that the book’s integrity might not be completely shredded by the Hollywood machine.

UPDATE: In following up on Pamela Ross’s comment below, I discovered that the Rosenbach Museum did make a DVD about the now-closed Sendak exhibit that sounds well worth looking at:
 
Sendak on Sendak, DVD
$20.00
This DVD is a a companion to the Sendak on Sendak Exhibit at the Rosenbach, 2008-2009. It includes interviews with Sendak from the exhibit, as well as additional stories, anecdotes, and memories from the artist himself, not included in the exhibit.
[Add to Cart]  [View Cart]

How about you? Any thoughts on Sendak? "Last Dance?" Brundibar? Wild Things?

We’ve just had inventory done at the store. This is all fine and dandy, but it forced me to confront the back room. The place my staff is scared of, the place from which few return unchanged, and the place toddlers love to discover when no one’s really paying attention to them.

The back room is supposed to be the office, the place for overstock and boxes of author event books, a place to close the door and have a moment of peace and quiet. A thoughtful place. Well, not so much at the Flying Pig. Our back room is a hazard. Oh, sure, there’s a computer and desk space, really just enough space for the keyboard and mouse, but there’s no chair. The chair is at my house and we’ve never gotten another one; we like the extra space, for the dog beds. Yes, we have two seemingly massive dog beds in the back for our two cocker spaniels, Theo and Inky. They only come to the store once a week or so, but I insist on keeping the beds in the office. Admittedly, they’re usually perched, pecariously at best, on a box, but at least they’re out of the way.

The desk is mounded by catalogs and books we have to look at that customers’ friends have published themselves, that they think "would do really well at the Flying Pig." (More on what to do about self-published books in another post.) Then there’s the fax machine that really just chirps when the automated people call about my healthcare needs.  

In a perfect world, if you need a book from overstock, you should be able to just walk in, find the shelf, then alphabetically find the book. Here’s what happens at the Flying Pig: the staff member goes back there, finds the shelf, which is too high for them to reach (for the most part all but one of our staff is under 5’2"), then they drag a footstool in and stand on that, rooting around the shelf. If I stand on the footstool, my head grazes the ceiling: the back of the store is only six feet two inches high. This height, or lack thereof, creates a lot of heat. So, we’ve taken out every alternating light bulb, but it’s still hot, so it feels like a darkish tanning bed in there. Back to finding the books. If you’re lucky it only takes a few minutes, if luck is not on your side, it’s a mystery. We try to keep to order, but it’s hard. And it seems most folks think I’m the reason for the chaos.  I must admit to this. I know where things are because I put them back wrong every day. I just don’t tell people, "Oh, that extra copy of Eragon is on the third shelf, behind the gardening books."

Rep meetings are a whole other story. The lack of chairs means we’re all perched on the fabric cubes we have throughout the store. These cubes are comfy for about 10 minutes and then the lack of a back starts to wear on everyone. Catalogs are sliding off laps, laptops are perched at very dangerous angles. And can I ask other booksellers: just how long does it take to find an outlet in your office in the back room? I’m forever bending under the counter secretly wishing I had one more lightbulb plugged in, so I could actually see where the damn outlet was. I always feel sorry for the reps, hauling their massive bags in the back that can absorb nothing more. After being in our new space for two years, I now have meetings in restuarants and the middle grade section. Really, it’s pathetic.

Toddlers love to sneak back. Some love to see the cash register as you have to pass it to get to the back room. I always indulge them by opening the register and saying, "Do you want to see the money?" Some toddlers do make it all the way to the back room. I love them. Toddlers are great. They don’t judge. Their mothers, however, take it all in with eye-widening horror and never quite look at us the same way again. 

C’mon, share your back room horror story. All of our reps say it’s not just us.

Okay, this seems to be my weekly advice for authors and independent bookstores. Today’s advice is born from frustration and anger. This is not as much as advice as a rant about Amazon.com, authors and indie bookstores.

Local authors, it seems, sometimes expect things of their local bookstore. They expect us to carry their books, to feature their books on a variety of applicable displays and to host events for them. In turn for this I get to carry their books, often treasures that thrill me to put in the hands of my customers; I get to design displays with their books in the hopes that more people will buy their books, and lastly, I have the pleasure of having a book release party for them or other celebration of their book. When all of this works well, it’s an exchange that everyone understands.

But then I go to the author’s website to fact check something for a press release and I see a "Buy This Book" link and it goes right to Amazon.com and often only Amazon.com. Ouch. Straight to the place that seemingly makes it easier to buy the book. Straight to our biggest, most tenacious competitor that has let people believe that bricks and mortar stores are becoming a thing of the past. 

Authors, if your local indie bookstore has a website, link to it. Then your website visitors can click on it and within seconds be able to buy your book, just like they can at Amazon.com. And you’ve supported a store that has supported you. Let’s face it, Amazon may discount, but they’re not going to herald your latest book with a wine and cheese party or a dumpling dinner, or handsell your book to someone looking for book group suggestions. No one is going do more for your book than your local store that has a good relationship with you and your book. So, you need to help us by getting your fans to buy the book either at your local independent or at indiebound.com.

One more thing, last week I posted about what to do when you come to a store. Well, some of you don’t shop at your local indie. I’m not sure what causes this. But once we get over the initial shyness of meeting you, we’ll treat you like every other customer. The difference between authors and customers is they’re not asking me to host book launch parties or mention them in our newsletters, or angrily asking why they’re not listed on our website, etc. As booksellers, we’ve got a lot on our plates. 

So, the best author/bookstore relationship is one of mutual respect, with some keen business savvy thrown in. We need you as much as you need us. Promote your books on your website with links to local websites or indiebound.com. Remember, your local store can also sell autographed books on their websites which Amazon cannot. We actually had a deal with a local author who had a link on his website to our email address so people could request personalized books which we would then fulfill by calling him in to sign. Patronize your local bookstore. Let us get to know you. The better we know you the better we are to help sell your books. If one day, you’re in and saying how much you’d like to work with schools or book groups, the next time someone comes in looking for a way to liven up their book group, you’ll pop immediately to mind. It’s these connections that build relationships that are mutually beneficial for all involved.

I’d like to end with applause to the authors I’ve confronted about the Amazon.com issue. Without exception, every author has responded graciously, if somewhat sheepishly, and very speedily added other links in addition to Amazon, or a few really supportive authors have removed Amazon.com altogether. As booksellers we can help the authors by knowing how to get links on websites. As booksellers, we should be on top of who our local authors are, invite them to the store regularly and continue to have an active "local author" section.  

The beauty of this is: you get to do what you love: write. And we get to do what we love: sell great books. It’s really a win-win.

We are in the midst of events insanity at the store, once again, so I’ve been putting in looooong hours, making my available "guest blogging time" scant, to say the least. BUT in between preparations for and execution of events with folks like Mary Ann Hoberman, Chris Bradford, Anna Alter, T.A. Barron, Harry Bliss, Rick Riordan and Megan McDonald (to name just a few of the talented people who have been at our store this week or who’ll be coming in the next few), I’ve been jotting down note after note about things I’d like to recommend to you or tell you about or simply "share." What follows is ONE. More will be forthcoming after some down time, which I’m hoping to find this weekend!

My tidbit for today is a plug for a great episode of my favorite radio show, This American Life."While TRYING to wait patiently for my turn with the Minute Man Library system’s ONLY copy of the audiobook edition of Under the Jolly Roger by L.A. Meyer (in a future post I will detail my obsession with this series on audio), I have been catching up on T.A.L. via podcast. The "Didn’t Ask to Be Born" episode that aired on March 20th of this year originally aired seven years prior (on March 29, 2002), but that doesn’t make it any less powerful now, and the timing is perfect for the world of publishing.

Following a theme that’s best summed up as "every parent’s worst nightmare," the first half of this episode features interviews with journalist/mother and now author Debra Gwartney and her two daughters, all of whom recount what happened before and after the girls (then ages 13 and 15) ran away from home. Their story is frightening, fascinating and heartbreaking in ways you might not expect. Reviews of Debra’s new book telling this story, Live Through This: A Mother’s Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love, suggest it might very well be the same, and more. (They certainly make ME want to read it!) Here’s an excerpt from Booklist‘s starred review:

Gwartney deserves high praise for her clear and lacerating prose, her refusal to assign blame or make excuses, and the stunning candor with which she offers telling glimpses into her own, and her daughters’ father’s, youthful recklessness and parental flounderings. Everyone concerned about self-destructive teens, and every survivor of her or his own wild times, will find Gwartney’s searing chronicle of her resilient family’s runaway years deeply affecting.

As if the first isn’t moving enough, the second half of "Didn’t Ask to Be Born" features Brent Runyon reading an excerpt from his harrowing and beautiful memoir The Burn Journals. Listen to Brent tell the story of the day in eighth grade when he set himself on fire, then go hug your favorite teenager. THEN go buy them a copy of The Burn Journals. While you’re at it, you might also want to take a look at Brent’s new novel Surface Tension: A Novel in Four Summers. As is the case with Debra’s book, I haven’t yet read this one myself, but it is also racking up starred reviews from trusted sources like Kirkus, who said, "With sensitivity and candor, Runyon reveals how life changes us all and how these unavoidable changes can be full of both turmoil and wonder."

I love that an hour-long program on the radio can be full of these things too. I HIGHLY recommend devoting an hour to this episode, which you can listen to for free on the This American Life website. Just click on the little orange picture of a speaker beside the words "Full episode" on the left side of the screen and you’ll be on your way. (Be sure to come back and let me know what you thought of it!)

There’s just something about a witty, jaundiced point of view that warms the cockles of this ex-New Yorker’s heart. When we moved to Vermont from the city, I bought Josie a mug that said, "Please talk faster, I’m from NY." She used it.

So imagine my delight when Sharyn November posted a link on Facebook this morning to the Despair Inc. guy’s website. And in honor of Alison Morris and her most excellent t-shirt links, which I know are sorely missed, I decided to re-FB (the Facebook version of re-tweeting) this little tidbit.

I had seen these folks’ Demotivator posters, which are hilarious, but was not aware of the mugs or DespairWear t-shirts. I think I’m going to have to go get one of these blogging mugs.

Warning: a little cynicism goes a long way, so pace yourself! And have a great weekend. No irony.

Dr. Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go! is the Goodnight Moon of graduation gifts: the sure thing, the go-to title, the book many graduates probably get two or three copies of at their graduation parties. There’s a reason it’s so popular, of course: it celebrates new beginnings and the possibilities ahead, all with Ted Geisel’s trademark whimsy and cheer. We always have a nice stash of copies on hand this time of year, but we also like to recommend books off the beaten path. We ask customers questions about the graduate to see if we can come up with a little something extra, something personal and special that will make the graduate feel the gift giver’s careful thought and consideration.

 
Some of our favorites are handsome editions of classic books, fit to grace a scholar’s lifetime bookshelf. The Riverside Shakespeare is fantastic for literature lovers with every play and sonnet in the canon, and remains a favorite from my own high school graduation. Mine was a boxed set with two volumes, and the tall, slim red-cloth books still have their (slightly worn now) gilt lettering that evokes the magic of the language inside. This is my favorite book in the world, my desert-island necessity, and a good-luck charm of sorts: I pressed Vermont fall leaves in it in 1990, years before I decided to move here. (I like to think the book knew before I did.) Though The Riverside Shakespeare no longer comes in two volumes, it’s still a great-looking book with endless worlds inside.

Another classic we sell oodles of for graduates is Homer’s The Odyssey, either alone or appealingly paired with The Iliad. What better way to acknowledge a new grad’s journey ahead than with the chronicle of an adventurer who perseveres despite every kind of pitfall and obstacle?

For sheer aesthetic pleasure, we also love love LOVE Pablo Neruda’s Odes to Common Things, which showcases 25 of Neruda’s beautiful odes in the loveliest book. Objects as common and essential as spoons and soap are celebrated bilingually on facing pages with paired exquisite pencil drawings. This might be our all-time bestselling graduation present.

For the energetic, service-oriented graduate who loves travel, hands-on work, and cultural exchange, Moritz Thomsen’s Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle, is a charming, honest, funny, and thoughtful chronicle of life in a small Ecuadorian village. This is another of our perennial bestsellers, and it’s almost literally off the beaten path. John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Profiles in Courage is also fine inspiration for civic-minded individuals, and there is a very handsome hardcover edition available. I’d love for President Obama to write about his heroes — and heroines (P. in C. isn’t long on those).

Then there are the graduates who might want a little more assistance with their new lives. For the high-school graduate heading off to college, what could be better than The Naked Roommate: And 107 Other Issues You Might Run Into in College? And for college grads, there’s Lizzie Post’s How Do You Work This Life Thing? Advice for the Newly Independent on Roommates, Jobs, Sex, and Everything That Counts.

For those of us who appreciate the timeless delight that children’s books provide at gift-giving time, here are a few fun titles that, like Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, make terrific graduation gifts for any age student:

Walk On! — Marla Frazee’s hilarious metaphor for anyone learning to turn initially wobbly steps into a solid steady gait.

Harold and the Purple Crayon — you, too, are the agent and artist of your dreams.

Ish — for the perfectionist grad, encouragement to follow one’s joy and take pleasure in the process, not the product.

Finally, there’s a new little gem, Peep, about a small chick afraid to step off a curb — a perfect way to acknowledge those sma
ll
steps that seem like giant leaps, the ones that mainly require a little support and a big leap of faith to accomplish.

What are your favorite books, especially children’s books, to give graduates?