I’m spending the week in New Orleans at the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association (ASTRA) Marketplace and Academy, and in between enjoying the really great food, terrific jazz spilling out of every doorway, and the myriad of historical side streets to explore in the Queen City, I’m buying toys and games for the rest of the year for my store. I thought I’d offer you a beignet and a sip of my chicory coffee this week, while I share a few of the themes and highlights from the Land of Play. Here are some of the trends we’re talking about on the trade show floor.
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Booksellers spend a lot of time honing our recommendations for customers, and we work to toe a graceful line between revealing enough of a wonderful book to hook a listener but not so much that we spoil a surprise or deprive readers of the joys of their own discovery. The unfolding of a story is a delicious treat, and its secrets should be held jealously by guardians.* There have been many times I’ve been grateful to begin a book without knowing anything about it. So how do we strike the right balance? And even when spoilers aren’t the issue, how do you craft a great book pitch? Here are the pointers I use for myself. I’d love to hear yours! Continue reading →

At a recent school visit Hope Larson, who writes and draws amazing graphic novels for young people, said in her opening comments to the students that she refers to herself as a cartoonist, not a graphic novelist. This piqued my curiosity, as I often struggle with the correct nomenclature for comics and graphic novels and the people who create them. Based on past conversations on the children’s bookseller listserv I participate in, plenty of others in my job wrestle with this, too. So I followed up with Hope after the school visit and she shed some light on it for me.

Cartoonist Hope Larson (photo: Carolina Day School staff)

Schools are letting out, releasing kids into the glorious summer months. For many, summertime means camp, and for some that means leaving home for weeks at a time and heading into an uncertain future in the great outdoors. Sleepaway summer camp offers kids the opportunity to head off the beaten path, experience new things, and explore who they are on their own. Plunged into a completely foreign environment and routine, campers navigate a complex social world where personal identities are unknown and relationships must be negotiated from scratch. For some, camp offers exhilarating freedoms. For others, it offers deeply disconcerting new terrain. Either way, the experience is usually one to remember—a premise explored in two new graphic novels that explore the singular mix of excitement and adventure, anxiety and discomfort that can define the summer camp experience. Continue reading →

I don’t know if necessity is the mother of invention but they are at least close relatives. Take ARCs, for example. We’ve always hated not finding them a good home once their sale date has come and gone. What is the definition of a good home? I have always considered it to be any place that allows the ARC to further achieve its reason for being, promoting a particular book and providing engagement with reading in general.

Karin among her charges.

Summer vacation began in earnest this week for our school-age kids, and the last of the high school commencements were held on Sunday. The graduation open houses, catered taco bars and video highlights of the JV tennis team season will sputter on for a month or more, but basically we’re in full sunscreen season here in Central Indiana. While our weekly activity and storytime schedule stays the same all year, lots of other things change in our store in the summertime, and we make some adjustments to accommodate the differences in tempo and volume.
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I’ve been to 22 BookExpos over the years, and last week’s was on the quieter side, not as jam-packed as usual with booksellers and the general public (the latter surely poured in after I left, at Saturday’s BookCon). This was not a bad thing from an attendee standpoint; the lack of claustrophobia made browsing booths and meeting with editors, publicists, and authors much easier. Some of my discoveries are in a box heading back to Vermont, but I can share — in pictures more than words — a few of my favorite highlights, from inspiring speakers to cool promo merch to celebrity sightings:
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No, I’m not referring to the electronic, needlepoint, or Whitman’s variety here, but the handy volumes of chapter samplers sometimes made available to book buyers. Twice a year the Publishers Lunch Buzz Books collections (adult and young adult versions) arrive in a mailing from the American Booksellers Association. They’re also made available to the general public as free downloadable ebooks. Personally, I appreciate getting the hard copies that I can flip through. I also appreciate getting a taste of some titles for which I may not have received an Advanced Reading Copy or just haven’t gotten around to digging out of a huge box of ARCs yet.
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Many of my colleagues, both at BookPeople and at ShelfTalker, are off at BEA this week, discovering new books and enjoying some time with friends and colleagues. I wasn’t able to get away this week due to my family’s schedule, but we’re still having a lot of fun here at home.This Tuesday we were joined by fabulous Drag Queens Honey St. Claire, Louisianna Purchase and Mascara Rivers along with Drag King Papi Churro and over 60 listeners for our second successful Drag Queen (and King) Storytime. And it was fantastic! One of the books they featured for their event was the dazzling Julián Is a Mermaid, a book that’s not only perfect for this event but that honestly takes my breath away. I am certainly not the first person to rave about this book, but it’s worthy of all the ecstatic buzz. Not only is the book stunning, with radiant aquas and greens and corals bursting from the book’s warm brown pages, but its intimate celebration of creativity and individuality captures something astonishingly poignant and tender. Continue reading →