Fall is truly a glorious time to be a bookseller. The boxes of yummy frontlist just keep pouring in, waiting to be shelved. One thing that comes in with the great new releases are Christmas and Hanukkah books. Sure, they’re just as delicious, but it’s only September.

I’ve been selling books now for thirteen years and it just seems to be that holiday books come earlier every year. And every year, I’m faced with the dilemma of putting them out when they come in, or waiting for the weather to at least be below 50 degrees. For some odd reason, there are people who want holiday books — and cards! — in August.  I just can’t bring myself to do it. Rushing the season, having Christmas books out with the back-to-school display, just seems wrong.

I don’t want customers to feel the sinking dread I do when I walk into my local drugstore in late July and the Halloween candy is already out. Deep down, I think we all feel it, it’s just wrong. In this speeded-up world, where we’re attached to our BlackBerrys and iPhones and people get mad if you don’t respond to an email within the hour, why are we pushing seasons fully three to four months before they’re actually here?

Halloween and fall books are perfect for right now. The kids are back in school, there is a crispness to the air that puts a happy smile on most faces. It feels right to set up a display of these books, but not Christmas. There’s not even any hope of snow or more than a freak frost right now. Reindeer would suffer in the warm weather, Santa’s still making toys, it’s just wrong. Why must people feel the need to plan so far ahead?

But, I work in retail. I think I can no longer cling to my ethos of "no Christmas display until after Thanksgiving." Our first few years in business, that worked – I even had customers thanking me for not rushing the seasons. But I fear I might have to cave-in to customer pressure and potential lost sales, and put my Christmas books out earlier.

Gotta go, I’ve got a display to do.

It was with shock and horror that I read the "A Library Without Books" article from the Boston Globe when my friend Vicki Uminowicz posted on the New England Children’s Bookselling Advisory Council listserv late last week, about a prep school outside of Boston almost gleefully removing all the books from its library.

It seems that headmaster James Tracy looks at books as purely outdated technology, “like scrolls,” he says. So he removed all 20,000 books (mostly he’s given them away to other schools that still use and appreciate books – at least he’s done one thing right) from the library and is creating, instead of stacks filled with books, a multimedia electronic center. The main feature of this new world is a coffee shop. A coffee shop, at a prep school! Do you think it’s more important to get a good latte or maybe be able to actually touch a book, to look at a great image, to pore over an index looking for help with your mid-term paper? To quote the article:

In place of the stacks, they are spending $42,000 on three large flat-screen TVs that will project data from the Internet and $20,000 on special laptop-friendly study carrels. Where the reference desk was, they are building a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine… they have spent $10,000 to buy 18 electronic readers made by Amazon.com and Sony. Administrators plan to distribute the readers, which they’re stocking with digital material, to students looking to spend more time with literature.

Okay, so let’s do some math here: this new world that will make our students better by giving the best technology money can buy, the school is spending $12,000 on a cappuccino machine and only $10,000 on E-readers. Seems to me the school wants to be a Starbucks and not a place of learning.  Oh, and if you’re one of the 450 students who aren’t able to check out one of the 18 E-Readers, then it’s suggested that you read all your texts on your computer. Yes, the same computers where kids instant-message several friends simultaneously while checking their Facebook accounts. I really wonder just how much these poor kids are going to be able actually learn competing with everything else on their computers.

I just can’t imagine paying $41,825 (last year’s tuition at Cushing Academy) and not having any actual books in the library. As a prospective parent at this school, what would matter to me would be not the state-of-art e-readers available to 4% of the student body, or a top-of-the-line cappuccino machine (how many parents really want their growing kids having such ready access to caffeine?), the flat panel screens that make surfing the web cool, and Facebook pages all the more enjoyable, or being told to research on the web, which is often full of bad sources that often cannot be verified without using a book (many colleges have forbidden use of Wikipedia entries in any research papers).

Clearly, this issue strikes close to my heart. I cannot imagine walking into a “library” and not finding anything to thumb through, to hold and to smell. Books are our history as well as our future. To abandon books altogether in favor of flashy technology seems short-sighted and foolish. There is no middle ground, so smooth transition, no try-out period. Just one man’s opinion that books are worthless in the school setting (my English teacher is rolling in his grave) and boom, they’re gone. I am so angry I can barely see straight. But I’m an even-handed blogger.

In fairness, I’m giving a link to a speech by headmaster James Tracy defending his reasoning for the removing all the books. I just think he’s so in love with himself for abolishing the library as we know it, opting for computers, what he calls “Portals to Civllizations,” that I can find no points that sway me. And finally, the last paragraph really sums up what he thinks: This is the future. All those who fail to get ahead of this curve, embrace its possibilities, and try to optimize its potential for humane and humanizing contingencies, will face certain reduction to irrelevance within ten years.

I cannot imagine that the book will become irrelevant in ten years. I suspect what’s more likely to happen is headmasters who become so enamored of riding the latest technological wave, and are so full of hubris, will find themselves obsolete far sooner than ten years. But at least if James Tracy finds himself without a job when parents realize books are good and vital, he can get a great cup of coffee on the way out. 

The incomparable Barbara Seuling sent me a link to a petition circulating in an attempt to save the beloved Reading Rainbow program; WNED-TV, which currently produces the show, can’t afford to renew the rights to the Reading Rainbow books.

This is a real loss for children and education. The television show that brought books to life in the homes and schools of millions of children—many of them without access to books of their own—is over; the show stopped recording new episodes in 2006 and its reruns ceased airing on August 28 of this year. The show won 26 Emmy awards and a Peabody Award for excellence in children’s programming over the course of its 26-year history.

I thought many of you authors, illustrators, editors, teachers, librarians, and booksellers—not to mention publishers, who hold the rights to these books, *cough*—might be interested in reading the petition and perhaps signing it, and contributing in other ways to the survival of a very worthy resource for children.

Here’s the brief petition text; you can read more about Reading Rainbow at the PBSKids website and at the Reading Rainbow website of GPN, the company that conceived and developed the show.

The Care2 petition site‘s text reads:

Between August 27 and September 1 over 500 people signed Part 1 of this petition, which is now closed and on its way to PBS. It contains many thoughtful and heartfelt comments from librarians, teachers, authors, illustrators, parents, grandparents, young people who grew up with the the program, and other supporters. Won’t you join them? If you would like to add your name and comments, please sign Part 2, which will be delivered on Friday, September 18. Here’s why: On Friday, August 28, many public stations had to close the book on the Emmy-winning children series ‘Reading Rainbow,’ hosted by LeVar Burton. ‘Reading Rainbow’ — which halted production in 2006 when funding ran out — officially ended, 26 years after its 1983 premiere when its contract expired at the end of the week. This excellent program supports caring for the Earth and values diversity, and of course encourages reading in an attractive and unique format. It should be included in all public stations’ daily lineup.

Our Catching Fire release day party was the perfect example of how Josie and I balance each other out in the bookstore. She’s a morning person, so she suggested opening at 8 am for the kids who couldn’t wait to get their hands on the book. I’m a night owl, and wanted to host brunch, not breakfast, for teens who, like me, probably wanted to sleep in. We compromised, and it turned out we were both right. She opened at 8 and, sure enough, sold a dozen copies before officially opening the store at 10, and I hosted the party upstairs in the Flying Pig Loft at the very reasonable hour of 11 am. I planned the party, and she made sure we actually had the supplies necessary to pull it off.

Our idea was to have a training camp competition for Tributes. Preparations included setting up the Loft, clearing lots of space for the archery and nerf disc gun stations (it’s roomy up there, so that wasn’t a problem), buying and/or gathering materials for these training stations, creating a system to keep track of the kids’ scores, and getting snacks and juice for the kids (in this case, we went with Fig Newmans and Newman-O’s, because I’m on a kick with those, and some lemonade and berry juice). We also got a bag of mixed Halloween candy for exit treats. Paper cups and napkins, some rope, a few tables, some Nerf toys, a timer, pen, sterilizing alcohol, some parachute men, bagel knots, and a couple of EyePops were all we needed.

We’re short-staffed this week, with our two high-schoolers gone and one of our adults on vacation, so there were just two of us up in the Loft, me and my colleague, JP, who was a children’s librarian for 30 years before she came to work at the bookstore so is a crack hand at events. The kids arrived in three main groups; this was unplanned, but worked out well. We had 16 "Tributes" in all, three of whom were girls, the rest boys. They ranged in age from 8 to 14. The younger kids hadn’t read the book; they had heard about the party and wanted to come. Sixteen kids isn’t a large number, but it’s not too shabby for the last day of summer (school started on Wednesday for the kids), not to mention a weekday mid-morning event. I think it’s safe to say the kids had a blast — and so did JP and I. Here’s how it worked:

First: SIGN-IN. Tributes checked into the training center, recording their names, phone numbers, and District number of choice. They received the two puzzles below and were instructed to put them in their backpacks for later. These were a crossword puzzle and a word search I made up with clues from The Hunger Games (not from Catching Fire, since I didn’t want to give anything away). Contestants who bring back either completed puzzle (or both) by this Friday will be entered in a prize drawing. Our cheerful, helpful Scholastic rep, Nikki Mutch, sent a box of Catching Fire pins to give away. We’ll also use hot ARCs as prizes. (Note: everyone who buys a copy of Catching Fire this week also gets the puzzles.)

(Note: my photos are a little lacking. We were too busy running the stations to take pix during the event, so we ended up staging shots after the party with some of the kids who stayed after. I had to use my phone to take the pics, which didn’t help. Then I imported them to a PC instead of my Mac, and edited them with some crazy, unfamiliar program that ended up making everything look grainy and strange and messed up the color. Apologies! But I think you’ll get a sense of the party, at least.)

TRAINING STATION 1: ARCHERY. This was really fun and grabbed the kids’ interest immediately. Josie had bought a cool toy bow that shoots Nerf missiles. We set up an easel with a sheet of posterboard and balanced a paper cup on top of the easel. A direct hit to the cup earned 5 points; a hit to the posterboard that knocked over the cup earned 2 points. Each contestant got a practice shot and then had three tries to topple the cup. (The highest score was 12.) JP and I kept score and replaced the cup between shots. Once contestants had finished the archery round, they moved on to Station 2.

TRAINING STATION 2: KNOTS. This was simple to set up. We took a spool of nautical rope and cut it into lengths of about 18", then propped open a copy of The Daring Book for Boys. Pages 10-11 have instructions for tying 3 fairly simple knots. Each knot successfully tied was worth 2 points.  (In the picture at right, the boy in the background is working on the knots challenge with JP standing by. The boy in front is at Station 3.) JP and I went back and forth between the archers and the knot tyers and getting the new Tributes set up.

TRAINING STATION 3: PROBLEM SOLVING. We had parachute men and bagel knots. The challenge was to make successful Sponsor Gifts by tying the bagel knot to the parachute man (no piercing of the bread was allowed) and floating it down from the loft (there’s an upstairs loft in the Loft, which is why it’s called the Loft, you see?). Only two kids at a time are allowed up the circular staircase, and surprisingly, they were really patient about it. They had as much fun watching each other’s parachutes float down as they had floating their own. A cute thing I wasn’t expecting is that every single kid ate his bagel knot after it landed on the floor — even though we had extras for eating at the snack table. I don’t know why that charmed me so much.

TRAINING STATION 4: SHOOTING PRACTICE. Josie had found a battery-operated Nerf disc gun at the same toy store where she found the bow and arrows. This required another big cleared lane for shooting. We’d set up small and large paper cups on the window ledge. Each Tribute had to line up next to a little flying pig doorstop we have and aim for the cups. Landing in a big cup earned 2 points; landing in a small cup earned 5 points. This was a tough challenge, because the gun tended to shoot discs in a leftward arc, so even with 10 tries, it was tough to land a single disc. I think someone earned 7 points, and that was the highest score. JP landed her very first test shot; I was impressed.

TRAINING STATION 5: BREATH CONTROL. We had two EyePops (thanks to Kenny Brechner, at whose store I discovered them), mint-flavored rubbing alcohol (! I guess they make this for thermometers on the theory that it won’t have such a hideous taste, but the kids assured me that it was still vile), and sterile wipes. EyePops are little plastic pipes with frog- or crocodile heads and little baskets on top that hold two Nerf eyeballs. The challenge is to blow into the pipe, raising the eyeballs into the air, keep them there for as long as possible, and then lower them safely back into the cups. Tributes got a practice run, and then were timed (using the stopwatch function on my phone; I have to say, the phone came in really handy during this party!). They got to take the best time out of three successful runs. The lowest score was a little over 2 seconds; the highest was 7 seconds. One of the older boys was so great, taking over the timing and helping instruct the younger kids while I signed in some new Tributes. The kids were great about letting me sterilize the pipes in between each kid.

LAST STEP: After the kids were done with all challenges, they gave us their score sheets to keep and tally. Scoring Stations 1-4 was easy, a simple points system. We scored the breath challenge by looking at the range of results (2 to 7 seconds) and assigned points on a 6-point scale, using half points where needed.

We had candy in addition to the snacks (which were totally gone by the end of the party, which surprised and amused me; kids are completely hollow, aren’t they?), and each kid chose two of those treats to take away at the end of the event.

THE AFTERMATH: The winners of each Station will receive their choice of prize ARCs, and the overall winner will win a copy of the third book in the series. All the kids’ score sheets will be included in the prize drawing along with the readers who turn in their completed word search and crossword puzzles.

How does one judge the success of an event? Sometimes it’s book sales. But these kids would have bought the book whether or not we had an event. So in a case like the Catching Fire party, it’s all about community goodwill, and camaraderie, and fun. I think the fact that the kids hung around after finishing their stations, talking about The Hunger Games and going back to take challenges again, was a pretty good sign. Some of their parents had to drag them away. And one of our great customer kids, one of the older boys at the event, just knocked me out; he and his friend were the last two left, and when his friend said, "Okay, let’s get going," this kid said, sotto voce, "Let’s help clean up first." And his friend said, "Yeah, yeah, sure," and they actually zipped around the Loft throwing away used juice cups and paper napkins, restoring Nerf discs to their holders, and gathering up the parachute men from their flung positions. Now don’t get me wrong, they aren’t saints — saints would have untangled the snarled parachute-men strings instead of holding them out and saying, "Uh, these are really a mess," and dropping them back on the table — but they are very close to, and I have a small lump in my throat just thinking about it.

I’m lucky lucky lucky to have the job I do, where I get to share books and parties with kids and families I just adore, who crack me up every day, who love reading, and have very good hearts.

There is a very lively and sadly, much needed, discussion on the children’s bookselling listservs right now about what to do about books and toys that are damaged by customers. The discussion was begun by a very frustrated bookseller desperate for tips from other stores about what to do about stopping merchandise from getting damaged. It’s interesting — what struck me was rather than tons advice being offered, it was the torrent of stories from other booksellers eager to share their nightmares of how things got damaged, or out-and-out rude customer behavior. I’m not going rehash the bad behavior, but for you booksellers having a bad day, just know: it’s so not you.

The most obvious thing I noticed from the discussion is the majority of stores who aren’t carrying books that begged to played with, i.e., pop-ups and lift-the-flaps. These books create their own conundrum: to sell them they must be displayed in a way that people can interact with them the way they’re supposed to; to display them means the book tends to get ruined by little and big hands alike. It gets very expensive to buy an extra book and sacrifice it for the display. Every once in a while, publishers will create a display dump that actually comes with a display book. Penguin went one further with Tomie dePaola’s Brava, Strega Nona: A Heartwarming Pop-Up. If you bought the dump, not only did you get a display copy, but the dump was actually a stand where people over four feet high could look at and play with the book, and below the display was where you stacked your neatly-wrapped-in-plastic stock of the book. Absolutely brilliant idea. I know display copies are expensive for publishers, but let’s face it, no one will buy a pop-up that’s not wrapped, even if they’re the first one to open an unwrapped one.

Lift-the-flap books or books with lots of little envelopes to open are also just begging to be broken. Pretty much once an envelope on an Ology book has been opened, it looks like it’s been opened and no one wants it. So, there has to be constant vigilance around these sorts of books.  It can be very trying to constantly police the store telling kids no, nicely. I am not a fan of the book that makes noises. Once a young child find that book, they will push the buttons until someone tells them to stop. I try very hard not to be that person, but if I have to say no, I try to do it nicely. "Why don’t you press the button three more times then put the book back, so the batteries don’t wear out." I’ve noticed all noise-producing books come with that little plastic strip in the back to prevent the noise part from working until it’s purchased, but almost all kids know how to take that off and I can’t ever get that strip back in. 

It’s not just kids being curious little people and lifting flaps or making a book page pop-up — there are adults who damage books too. There are the adults who think it’s all right to crack open the spine on a hardcover they look at in the store. Sometimes they buy that book, but lately I’ve seen a lot of adults pawing over a hardcover, cracking the spine, etc., then buying the next in the stack and putting the pawed-over book back on the shelf. Books and toys are fragile, more fragile than most people think. They don’t respond well to rough handling, or being used as a writing surface — I once had to refuse a return when I noticed that someone had used the book as the surface for doing their math homework. There was no way I could sell that book again with long division engraved all over the front cover.

There needs to be a healthy balance between displaying and looking at books and damaging books. Independent bookstores, for the most part, can’t afford any damages. We have to make sure that books that are looked at by customers can be sold. Several booksellers commented in the discussions that they thought the chains and big box stores aren’t as diligent about protecting their stock, so there’s a more casual attitude among customers about hurting books. Whenever I go to one of the chains I’m struck by how many books are strewn about the floor in the kids’ section. I was recently at my local Costco and was struck by just how many books they had and in what bad shape they were in and people were still buying them. This attitude towards books can make an indie bookstore’s worry over a damaged or chewed on board book seem extreme to some, but it’s our livelihood.

There are some things booksellers do that can help minimize damages. One thing we do is we’re really tough about accepting returns from customers if the book is anything less than pristine. This lets them know, that if we can’t sell it again, or return it to the publisher (who have all gotten much tougher about accepting less than pristine returns) then we don’t take it back. This sends the message that we care about how the books look.

Having staff on the floor at all times is a very good way to stop trouble before it starts. Every bookstore has a different way of nicely saying "Stop that" to adults and kids.  The best thing that bookstore do is distract the kids with toys that it’s totally okay to play with. At the Flying Pig we have brightly colored carpets in the two main little kid sections. Each has several toys for kids of all ages to play with. We have a small basket of hurt books with STORE COPY written on them for families to look at. Other stores have DEMO stickers on things that can be played with without reproach. It’s always good to give a child an option: "You can’t play with that, but, wow, you can play with all of these."

Ellen Mager of Booktenders’ Secret Garden proves the point that sometimes the most fun toys are the simplest. The toy that kids love the best at her store is an old-fashioned rotary phone. A phone! That kills me. A dial that goes around in circles helps Ellen protect her books. Brilliant.

People need to hold a book, some need to smell it, before they buy it. I understand that, I even welcome that, to a degree. There are lots of ways to look at books without hurting them. I think what makes booksellers insane is when books get hurt and then are hidden back on the shelves only to be discovered when someone wants to buy it. If you accidentally hurt a book, just tell me. I won’t get mad. I’ll thank you for bringing it to my attention, and ideally, you’ll offer to pay for it.

Up before dawn and drinking coffee, I am gathering myself for the last day of retail summer: the release of the long awaited Catching Fire. I am up this early because my dogs wouldn’t sleep past 4:32 a.m. and I thought, wow, I’ve got so much to do, I might as well get a jump on things.

Preparing for a release this big requires planning and stamina. Because school starts tomorrow, we didn’t think a midnight party would pass parental muster, so we’re opening at 8 a.m.  The cartons of books that have been secreted away in the back room can finally be opened and the books can be put in tidy stacks on the display in the front of the store. This sort of arranging, while not rocket science, takes time to do right and make look inviting. My goal is make sure that anywhere an eager reader is likely to look for the book, the book can be found.

We are short-staffed at the moment, so much of the grunt work of setting up for the 11 a.m party is falling to me and Elizabeth. We are setting up our event space (a great room above the store) as a training center. Each kid will pull a number designating their home district and also where they’ll train first. Since we’re in a room, we can’t have all the training stations, but we’re going to have archery, yes, probably the one thing that should be outside; we found suction cup and Nerf archery sets, so no one should actually get impaled. A customer’s dad is coming to show knot-tying and our ten and six-year-old nephews will be in the loft of the room with parachute men lobing the tributes to those who are worthy.  Instead of bread we’ll be using bagel bites and just lob them down from on high.

Elizabeth has designed a Hunger Games word search. Proper completion with speed will garner a prize. There will also be a "guess what happens" quiz, with one lucky winner to get a certificate for book three. 

The great thing is because this is training, there are no winners. This takes a lot of the stress out of it for participants. They’re just supposed to have fun. Although, I wonder how many kids, the day before school starts, are going to stay for a party when there’s such a great book to read. It’ll be an interesting and great day.

I’d write more, but I’ve got a ton to do.

As summer winds down, I thought I might take a moment and update some of my earlier blog entries.

In my very first post, I mentioned that my UPS man was having knee surgery. I’m happy to report that Mark has made a full, almost astounding recovery. He’s back to being the unicycling fool he was before the surgery. I say fool in the kindest possible way. I’d never met a unicyclist before Mark, and he is just enthusiastic about being able to ride on one giant wheel. It’s delighful.

Sadly, the scariest place in the bookstore, the back room, remains, perhaps even more frightening. Most of this is not my fault, as I’ve got cartons and cartons of Catching Fire waiting for eager kids and adults to read starting Tuesday. Try as I might, I just can’t keep that room clean. When I got back from vacation in July, I had an epiphany — I am the reason the store is messy. My staff consists of self-avowed anal compulsives and I’m, well, I’m not that way. The store is always cleaner at the end of the day if I’m not the one closing up. 

My struggles continue with the Baker and Taylor boxes. No easier to break down than they were months ago. I still struggle, but at least now, I protect my face when I recycle them, so at least, I haven’t punched myself in the face again. I have, however, gotten some wicked cardboard cuts which hurt and bleed way more than regular paper cuts.

The galleys for the fall have ceased and now we’re on to Spring 2010. Blissfully, our mudroom has been organized by month, so all the galleys are now in easy to read order. Meetings are now easier because I can actually find the book I need to look at before a meeting. While I’m organized, it’s a little scary to me that I’m already running out of room for 2010 galleys and it’s just September.

I have one very funny thing to add to When Kids Pay with Money. A young girl, about four, had saved her money to buy a fairy sticker book. It was on sale the day she came, so she saved a dollar, but still wound up needing to use, as her mom said, "all her paper money." This sweet little girl counted out four dollar bills and said to no one in particular, "But I like the paper money." Honey, we all like the paper money.

For a few years now, some of the hottest fairy properties on bookstore shelves have been the Rainbow Magic books — U.K. imports written by Daisy Meadows (which is I’m sure is – ahem – a real person’s name) and published in the U.S. by Scholastic. So far "Daisy" has penned at least nine Rainbow Magic series, each featuring at least seve  titles, all aimed at very young readers. The shelves of our beginning reader section (which are currently groaning for lack of space from having to accommodate all of these) are currently home to…
The Rainbow Fairies (e.g. Ruby the Red Fairy, Inky the Indigo Fairy),
The Weather Fairies (e.g. Abigail the Breeze Fairy, Evie the Mist Fairy),
The Petal Fairies (e.g. Pippa the Poppy Fairy, Olivia the Orchid Fairy),
The Pet Fairies (e.g. Katie the Kitten Fairy, Georgia the Guinea Pig Fairy),
The Jewel Fairies (e.g. Scarlett the Garnet Fairy, Sophie the Sapphire Fairy),
The Fun Day Fairies (e.g. Willow the Wednesday Fairy, Felicity the Friday Fairy), and The Dance Fairies (e.g. Jade the Disco Fairy, Rebecca the Rock n’   Roll Fairy).

As if that’s not already a fairy good-sized load of fairy books, there are (Holy shelf space nightmare, Batman!) two more series coming from Daisy Meadows this winter, each featuring another seven books: the Music Fairies (coming January 2010) and the Sports Fairies (coming April 2010). No doubt many a fairy-loving girl will soon be preoccupied with the difficulties faced by her winged friends in Fiona the Flute Fairy and Brittany the Basketball Fairy, to name just two!

While Daisy Meadows is rapidly covering a lot of thematic territory with these books, I myself am seeing some real sales potential in the areas that have NOT yet been covered by Rainbow Magic. With your help, I would like to enter the fairy successful fairy fray with this: the Book Business Magic series, published under my new penname, Flowering Fields. I know that, thanks to your input, each book in this series will be chock full of fairy exciting adventures and introduce young book lovers to the careers they might want to consider adopting someday.

My outline for the series’ first title, Bettina the Bookseller Fairy, currently looks like this:

Bettina the Bookseller Fairy by Flowering Fields

Bettina the Bookseller Fairy might take home a meager paycheck, but she loves communing with customers during her weekday evenings at Fairy Good Books, where three times she has earned the honor of "Pixie of the Month" for her fairy good customer service skills. Those skills come in extra handy on the day an evil troll leaves his children unattended in the children’s section! Will Bettina be forced to adopt the poor dears?

Now it’s your turn to help this series take shape. What professions do you think should be included in the Book Business Magic series? And what will those fairies’ adventures BE? Please help me fill in these fairy empty blanks by submitting your own title and plot suggestions in the comments below. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Carmen the Copy Editor Fairy
Pansy the Publisher Fairy
Paulina the Publicist Fairy 
Damian the Designer Fairy
Lolita the Librarian Fairy
Michael the Marketing Executive Fairy
Fred the Foreign Rights Fairy 

To create your own artwork to go alongside the fairies you create for Book Business Magic, visit the "Create a Fairy" page of Rainbow Magic Online. (That’s my rendering of Bettina the Bookseller Fairy at the very top of this post. They didn’t have a tattoo option, or I’d have gone that route.)

It seems to me you’d have to have enormous resiliency, not to mention a generous sense of humor and/or deep ethnic pride, to grow up black in this country. One of the many things I hope will come out of having Barack Obama as President is publishers’ embarrassed realization that, heck, there’s not a whole lot out there in the children’s book world featuring kids like Malia and Sasha. That is, books with black characters who lead 21st-century lives in a vibrant world of ethnic diversity. Books that aren’t about slavery, civil rights, and the struggles of interracial relationships. Those stories are vital and must be told—both the brutal and the inspirational—but just as 2009 American Jewish kids don’t see themselves primarily in the context of the Holocaust, neither do black children live in the past. They, like all children, deserve to be active, lively participants in the children’s literature of the present.
It’s not that race is unimportant. Race (and its equally powerful counterpart, class) are always with us in this country, and I do not think we should pretend they are not. That, too, would be a disservice to children. But in this overwhelmingly white field of publishing and bookselling, we need to get beyond an over-awareness of race and get to the real business of living in this colorful world. Somehow, the politeness of political correctness has ended up quashing a lot of what began as an authentic, hopeful, brilliant, warts-and-all exploration of cross-cultural joy and beauty that came out of the Sixties.
As a child of the mid-1960’s and 1970’s, I had the great good fortune of growing up at a time often referred to as a golden age in children’s book publishing. The likes of Ezra Jack Keats and Virginia Hamilton and Walter Dean Myers were unleashing their genius on the world, and in the heady culture of mainstream embracement of hippie ideals, racial representation in books was in some ways more inclusive, broad, low-key yet celebratory, and therefore “realer” than it feels (at least to me) today. I was a Free to Be…You and Me child, a Ms. Magazine ‘Stories for Free Children’ reader, and I wonder how we’ve gotten so far from those promising, inclusive days.
As a bookseller, it’s mortifying to have so few multiracial options to offer parents and kids—both white and black. It’s wildly frustrating to come up against, time and again, the erroneous assumption that white kids will not want to read about non-white kids. That is one of the most ridiculous pervasive myths in all of bookselling. Is Corduroy (interior illustration at right) not one of the most beloved classics of all time? Do children hesitate to pick up Looking for a Moose (left) by Phyllis Root because there are brown faces on the cover? In The Stories Julian Tells, can white children not relate to Julian and his little brother Huey “accidentally” eating up all the dessert before dinner? Do white parents eschew The Snowy Day because Peter is black? Is E.L. Konigsburg’s Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth less appealing to kids because one of its two main characters is black? (I was extremely disappointed to see that the new cover for that marvelous Newbery Honor book, while well designed, now omits the black character.) Are children reading Mary Hoffman’s Amazing Grace unable to put themselves in her imaginative shoes even if they aren’t black, or a girl? (Do I need to answer these rhetorical questions?)
When I worked in publishing back in the early ’90s, I had a friend who brought me along to sort publisher book donations at a well-known author’s NYC apartment. On our way, my friend told me that the author, who had quietly and modestly started an admirable literacy foundation, had also broken the color barrier in series book covers. She had had to fight to get a black main character on the cover of a book, against marketing resistance fearing the book wouldn’t sell to the series’ great white readership. She won the battle, and that book sold more copies than any of its prior series-mates. This is anecdotal, but I have no reason to doubt its veracity.
In some ways, we’ve come so far as a country. But the powerful influence of the nation’s publishing media hasn’t caught up. Nowhere was this more obvious than the recent disturbing events concerning the choice to put a white girl on the cover of a book about a black girl (Justine Larbalestier’s YA novel, Liar. This issue has been widely covered in the trade and blogosphere; for background, check out the author’s blog.) The white girl on the cover wasn’t meant to represent a secondary character in the book; she was meant to represent the black narrator. Now, the narrator is a liar, so there has been some debate about whether or not she is who she says she is. However, if that argument holds, then the best cover choice would be to obscure or omit physical features altogether (the decision of Larbalestier’s original Australian publisher; shown at left). Like it or not, the photograph of a person on a book cover codifies the publisher’s idea of that character’s appearance.
This choice to use a white girl shocked, but shouldn’t have surprised, me; book marketing can be an extremely cynical operation. Larbalestier’s U.S. publisher is certainly not the only house that has found itself on similarly iffy ground, and, to their great credit, they have chosen a replacement cover image that, if still not free from controversy, is a critical good-faith effort that I think will prove to gain more in public restoration of goodwill than they will have lost financially with the expense of the late change. (Note: corporate giant Microsoft just landed itself in some serious hot water with a racial switch on its website.)
One of my all-time favorite books as a middle-grade kid was Louise Fitzhugh’s Nobody’s Family Is Going to Change. It features a wickedly smart, sarcastic, funny main character, Emma, who eats too many cream horns (I had no idea what those were, but was fascinated by them and wanted one) and wants to be a lawyer. Her little brother loves to dance. Their parents—a brusque, traditional, lawyer father and a lovely, passive mother—are not thrilled with their children’s choices, and a family dramedy is born. In the book, race is only an issue inasmuch as it is an issue in Emma’s life, if that makes sense. That is, it’s one of many consuming issues in her life, but not (in her case) the primary one. Still, one of my favorite moments in the story is when Emma messes with her white Upper East Side classmates, who stupidly assume she’s from “the ghetto” because she’s black, though her family is easily as wealthy as any of theirs. She is annoyed and amused by their assumptions; it’s a delicious moment of awareness for readers from both sides of the
ignorance spectrum. Louise Fitzhugh was white, but she opened a window into an urban, black, upper-class world for me, a white kid growing up in Scottsdale, Arizona. I never forgot the subtler lessons underneath all that humor and rebellion Emma shared with me. (By the way, on the new cover for the book, which desperately needed the re-design, it’s interesting that Emma doesn’t look overweight. She hasn’t been whitewashed, but she’s been “thin-washed.” And that’s a blog post for another day.)
The good that has arisen from the unfortunate Liar incident is that it has initiated a more open discussion of racial representation in books and on book covers. The topic is uncomfortable in a field so overwhelmingly not “of color.” Attend a book show, and you will see a sea of largely white faces; finding editors, publishers, and booksellers of color is more challenging than finding male pre-K-through-3 teachers at a school convention. This is not intentional, but it is a fact, and needs to be addressed. At the 2008 BEA, Josie and I met a dynamic duo of young African-American women getting ready to open a bookstore. They spoke about the need for grants and scholarships to attract people of color to publishing programs at universities and colleges. Sounds like an excellent idea.
In the meantime, I’d like to compile a list of 2009 books that feature characters of color in books about contemporary American children, whether or not race is part of the story. In general, there seem to be more books meeting these criteria for teen readers than their younger counterparts. Where is our black Ramona Quimby? It’s not fair to make Christopher Paul Curtis do all the work in middle grade. (Just kidding. Sort of.) I’ve noticed a couple of recent new series for young readers, like Sharon M. Draper’s Sassy books (Scholastic) and Whoopi Goldberg’s Sugar Plum Ballerinas (Jump at the Sun). That’s a great start, but there’s room for so much more. Publishers and authors are invited to email me these titles at shelftalker2 at gmail dot com, and I will publish the list here in ShelfTalker. (Unless you are a bookseller, please don’t put these titles in the comments section, since people tend to discount those recommendations as self-promotion and you may end up undermining the very good title you hope to share with a larger audience.) 
As an undergrad at UC Berkeley, I remember being annoyed by the theme of a university exhibit featuring “Great Female Artists of the 20th Century.” Walking with my calm, brilliant thesis advisor, I ranted a little bit. “This makes it sound like great artists are male by default. They don’t have exhibits of ‘great male artists.’ Why not an exhibition of great artists, many of whom happen to be female?” She smiled, and said, “Ideally, it would be. It will be. But this is one of the steps we have to go through to get there.” The question of racial inclusiveness in children’s literature is a little like that. Like all things racial in this country, it’s been a process. But now I think we’ve gone through enough intermediary steps and are ready to get there.
*** UPDATE: Check out our LibraryThing collection of more than 2000 books featuring main characters of color whose stories are not primarily driven by racial issues: **** Also, for another article on this topic, with book ideas, check out Shelftalker’s “A World Full of Color”, a follow-up to this Ramona Quimby post.

Often, amid the hustle of a busy season, it’s easy to forget the little things that help sell books. I’m talking about the simple, well-written shelftalker. (Okay, secretly I was wondering how long it would me take once I started writing for ShelfTalker, to do a blog *about* shelftalkers. Just about five months — frankly, I feel like I’ve been holding back.)

Sometimes all it takes to turn a browser into a purchaser is an index card singing the praises of the book the customer is considering. A good shelftalker should read like an enthusiastic bookstore staffer handing someone a book. Short and to the point without giving away the plot, the perfect shelftalker is like having another staffer on the floor.

Tips for great shelftalkers:

– Aim for six lines long with six words per line. Elizabeth came back from an educational session with this formula and it really works. This format is easy for the eye to skim, while still being informative. It also looks good either typed up or handwritten.

– Don’t limit yourself to new books. Shelftalkers are a great way to sell backlist.

– Give different staffers different color index cards. This creates a splash of color and customers know JP’s color is orange and they look for her color when they need a recommendation.

– Keep your shelftalkers fresh. On an active shelf, shelftalkers can get worn, torn and dirty. Make sure to keep them looking crisp and re-do as necessary.

– Pay attention when you’re shelving and move shelftalkers to line up with their books again.

– Pull shelftalkers when you’re out of the book. One of our staffers brought in a small wooden box tabbed alphabetically. Whenever we’re out of a book, the shelftalkers gets placed in the box until the book is back in stock. There’s nothing more disheartening to a customer than reading an inspiring shelftalkers only to be told that the book is out of stock.

– Have fun with your shelftalkers. These are not book reviews. Try to write as you would speak to a customer. Think outside the box. I did a shelftalkers for Chelsea Cain’s murder thriller, Sweetheart, that has sold twenty copies this summer of the mass market thriller: "Sure it’s gruesome, sure it’s a female serial killer, but man o’man it’s good. Tense believable plot, rich characters, great easy read." It also helps that this shelf talker is exactly eye , it’s getting read more.

– Don’t put shelftalkers on shelves where little one can tear them off the shelves or get paper cuts.

– I prefer staff written shelftalkers over the ones that come from outside sources. I think having staffers write them lends each shelftalkers more credibilty–someone at the store liked this book enough to write about it.

– There can be such a thing as too many shelftalkers. Look around and see how the shelves actually look. If there are too many cards, none will get read.

– Lastly, read all the shelftalkers in your store. Get to know what your colleagues are recommending, so you can say if someone asks about you haven’t read, "I haven’t read it, but Kelly loved it. Here’s what she said."