Over the holidays I found myself helping a number of customers find books for those voracious younger readers who can be so tricky to keep supplied in books. I have one of those insatiable second graders and even as a children’s book specialist it can be a challenge. These readers want content, and they can handle longer stories, but they’re still young. They’re not ready for the emotional weight or thrilling suspense of many middle grade stories intended for slightly older kids. Plus, every reader has their own quirks—especially at this age—so there’s not exactly a one-size-fits-all solution. My reader rarely peeks out from behind the pages of his latest book, it seems, and has book piles started in every room. That being said, he’s only seven. He’s still turned off by dense type (“looks boring”) or the first two pages don’t hook him quickly enough (“is boring”) or for some reason the book drags in the middle (“got boring”).
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Guten tag from Germany, where this week I am attending Spielwarenmesse, the world’s largest toy fair. The enormous footprint of this show is hard to describe, so I will begin with the numbers, which while seem tangible and solid, in no way capture the vastness of this event. Over 67,000 attendees representing 132 countries are registered as I write this, and I am certain that the final numbers will increase. There are over 2800 exhibitors, housed in 12 separate convention halls, representing companies from over 68 countries, and showcasing over 1 million products. 120,000 of these products are NEW – and will be seen by buyers from around the globe. The entire city of Nuremberg seems filled with toy people, and this event is so large that public transportation, including an excellent integrated municipal train, tram and bus system, is free for all badge holders during the show. (New York City, are you listening?)
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We are familiar with the mist we encounter in Kazuo Ishigura’s Buried Giant, with the vagaries imposed on personal identity by the passage of time, and the fogging and subsuming of memory. Such mist is intrinsic to our experience of the present moment. The effort to dispel it is at the same time strenuous, imperfect, and vitally important.
Few things illustrate that importance more than the heartrending spectacle of people of good will turning against each other under the stress of competing ideals, all of which are valid. Such is the case in the the event cancellation filled outcry over American Dirt. Important concerns over inequities in publishing, the commoditization of migrant suffering, and cultural appropriation clash with core values of self determination and free speech in such a way that they harden and ignite rather than become supple and mutually informing.
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Not even the pout or pouncing of my adorable puppy could tear me away from my computer screen on Monday morning, when the American Library Association announced the 2020 ALA Youth Media Awards. As always, I spent the announcement time as one part excited fan, cheering for my favorites, and one part frantic bookseller, making sure we had all of the books on hand or on order.
I was delighted to see that the American Indian Youth Literature Awards have been made officially part of the ALA as of this year (they’ve been awarded in even-numbered years since 2006), and the response in the awards hall to the announcement of the Asian/Pacific-American Youth Literature Awards was gratifyingly noisy and enthusiastic. While there’s still so much ground to cover, it’s heartening to see greater recognition and visibility of the multiplicity of stories and creative genius in our culture.
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The laundry basket of clothes dumped from my suitcase is overflowing, as is my inbox, but before I begin to address the myriad of post-it reminder notes left by my staff, I wanted to take a little time and ShelfTalker space to debrief with you from Wi15 in Baltimore.
As I boarded the first of several flights home and hefted my very heavy backpack over my shoulder (I couldn’t resist that last swing through the author signing lines), I wished we could have had just one more day together with nothing scheduled at all, in order to discuss all the bookselling issues highlighted by the conference with my colleagues, perhaps with a local IPA in hand and no pesky calendar reminders on our phones urging us to yet another ballroom or meeting space for an appointment. The lofty goal of putting over 700 booksellers in one space to consider our industry from 10,000 feet up is grand, but the actualization of this event is jam-packed with distractions. Each publisher partner demands and deserves specific events to get face-to-face with booksellers, and non-book industry vendors need time and space to present their solutions. Add in a few “mandatory” social events and dinners, some committee meetings or panel responsibilities, and a couple of visits to the book room, and zoom, the week is gone. I saw a lot of people, but really only sat and talked with a few at any length. And so, while I have pages of notes to transcribe and implement, my best takeaways all occurred, as usual, in the hallways as we hurried between sessions. Unstructured time together is precious, and I could have used a little more of it.
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I’ve already written about how Gene Luen Yang’s Reading Without Walls Challenge made me love comics and graphic novels. Is it possible that he could make me love basketball as well?
I have to be honest, basketball is not my game. It all happens too fast, and I’m not really a sports person to begin with. In fact, this is my second semester with a kid on a basketball team, and I pretty much watch the games without really “watching” the games. Needless to say, I didn’t expect to be completely enthralled by a 400 page basketball story. Nonetheless, I planned to at least dip into Dragon Hoops because I love Gene Luen Yang’s books, and I wanted to be able to talk about this new one. Continue reading →

So here’s my plan for writing up a bit of first-person accounting of Winter Institute up until Wednesday afternoon, when I took a minute to dash this off. The plan calls for me to briefly mention a few items in note and then discuss one important event at length. We’ll see how that goes.
I came down to Baltimore on Saturday for two days of pre-Winter Institute ABA Board meetings. The upshot of which is that I can disclose the following information. Our incoming CEO Allison Hill is terrific and going to be a sensational leader. Also, it is to be noted that she and the justly promoted Joy Dallenegra Sanger, our new COO, make for a good beyond hope executive team. Furthermore, considering that we all know how gender bias continues to haunt children’s bookselling, ABA’s new leadership augurs well for addressing that bias meaningfully on the bookselling side as we move forward.
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Hordes of booksellers are swarming the Charm City this week, and the buzz is about more than just books. As ABA’s Winter Institute #15 got underway today, there was lots of pre-conference activity, from tours of the Penguin Random House fulfillment center in Westminster, Md., to participation in an anti-trust seminar in nearby Washington D.C., featuring leading authors and experts discussing the extraordinary dominance of Amazon in the retail and technology sectors of our economy. Pre-Winter Institute workshops also filled the day’s agenda, with sessions ranging from seminars on used book sales to small store buying (the books for small stores, that is, not the purchase of smaller retail businesses), a caucus gathering for small publishers, and an old favorite with new panelists entitled “The Life Cycle of a Book,” tracing each step in the publication process from editorial and design to marketing, distribution and promotion. Of course, entire hives of busy booksellers dipped in and out of local bookstores and literary attractions throughout the day, and gathered in hallways and hotel lobbies to greet old friends, put faces to names formerly known only on social media, and discuss current issues.
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The time period from the day after Christmas until Winter Institute is probably tied for first with the holiday season itself as the most bruisingly busy period of the year for me personally. Why? It is  a combination of pressing tasks that have been put off till the holiday season is over, an array of specialized, time-sensitive year-end tasks, and finally Winter Institute prep. For example, we do some course adoptions for the local University of Maine at Farmington, and those course books all need to be put on a spreadsheet, put in purchase orders, ordered, and put up on our website course adoption pages asap. The clock is ticking on a rogue’s gallery of W-2’s, quarterly and annual taxes, frontlist buying appointments looming on the immediate horizon, the giant project of weeding through the holiday sales inventory report for replenishment. The clock, for delegation-challenged small-store owners such as myself, is ticking.
At points, something has to give. Take today, where one of my tasks is writing this blog. Something of a break in a sense but what is being displaced?
Dear Publisher Credit Representative, I know you would like to be paid today but I had to write a ShelfTalker post, which I hope you will accept as adequate compensation?
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If you are like me, by this time in January, you are sick to death of all your store’s sidelines. Frankly, as the midwestern winter gloom makes my store a depressing monochromatic gray at opening time, and darkness descends at 4:00 p.m. each day (thank you, Daylight Savings Time), I’m just sick to death of the whole shebang. To make matters worse, I tend to skip the January gift shows in favor of attending Winter Institute, and Toy Fair is a full month away. My impulse bins near the register look sparse, and the game samples are all missing pieces after the holidays. Inventory chores loom overhead like a pack of circling vultures, blocking out the meager Indiana winter sun….. it’s time to order some fun little stuff to cheer everyone up!
Here are a few of the best sideline items that we’ve received in the last two weeks, and perhaps you can share your finds, too, in the comments below. We ordered all of these items through http://faire.com, a veritable Aladdin’s cave full of interesting specialty vendors, who ship quickly and have low, low, low minimums,  allowing tentative post-holiday retailers to sample small amounts of very fun merchandise.
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