As the holiday season arrives, I take a moment to refresh my mental arsenal of go-to funny picture books, because at this time of year in our store, funny stories simply fly. We certainly sell plenty of luminous, moving, and heartfelt picture books in December, but invariably the bestselling picture book from our holiday catalog each year has been funny—books like The Bad Seed, Lion Lessons, The Princess and the Pony, Unicorn Thinks He’s Pretty Great, or Niño Wrestles the World. And of course there’s always and forever Bark, George. Funny books often offer irresistible, bite-sized “hooks,” and they’re a safe bet with a broad swath of kids. I totally get it. Unlike my oldest son who has always wanted to listen to any book someone was willing to read him, my youngest honestly tends to wander off part of the way through unless something captivates him early on with a dramatic twist, interactive element, or hilarious surprise. Continue reading →

This year was different. A haunting will do that, I suppose. Compiling our annual list of the top books for the season, The Holiday 20, is always a reflective experience, a kind of retail meditation. The list is the core of our fourth quarter marketing, in store, on our website and in the Gift Guides of two local newspapers. The particular qualities of tone, sentiment, the nature of the reading experience, and the adherence to the interests of an established gift recipient pool which commend a book as a great seasonal present, mark the Holiday season at the bookstore as a kind of parallel dimension, an extra room that appears once a year and then fades back into ephemera.
After the list was completed I became aware of shadow presences that had been lurking in the periphery, ghosts, the books of Holiday 20s past. Given its mystical aspects it is actually surprising that I have never experienced a Holiday 20 haunting before now. Though to be sure time plays the crucial role of stowing away years of such lists, their forgotten glories and failures, before a haunting can manifest.
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Tuesday morning, bright and chipper, feeling refreshed from my four hours of actual sleep following the several hours of tossing and turning that is traditional for retailers in the month of December, I pulled into the store parking lot two hours before opening. I was feeling smug about the bag of muffins on the passenger seat that I had remembered to pick up on Monday afternoon for story time, and the file folder full of completed order forms that a kind school media specialist had dropped off at a library author event the night before. Look at my efficiency! Bravo to my multi-tasking! I was holiday sweatered and sensibly shod for a full day of recommending great books, wrapping adorable gifts, and spreading literary sunshine… well, at least melting some hearts and their icy grip on their wallets.
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A customer came in today to scout some possibilities for her seven-year-old’s Christmas presents. Young Rose’s wish list includes “a fluffy fluffy robe,” “a real pink clock,” and “a fancy readable chapter book just for me.” This last item is what she came in for, and Rose’s mom wanted to spot some titles to run by Santa.
The words “readable… just for me,” Rose’s mother explained, means that she wants a chapter book she can read on her own without adult help. Rose reads at around an easy reader level 2, so it turned out to be a bit of a challenge to find a chapter book that fit the description.
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