Once again I’ve perused the endless book-related offerings on Etsy for you and put together a post filled with suggestions for handcrafted gifts, many of them made with recycled materials. As always I’ve linked both to individual sellers’ stores (click on the seller’s name) AND to the items themselves (click on the photo). If you click on an item but find it’s sold out, visit that seller’s store to see if they’ve listed the item again or contact them to request that they do so. Many sellers have information on their store page about the likelihood of their being able to get these gifts to you before Christmas. (Time is obviously running out!)

Oiseaux sells wonderful personalized bookplates, featuring vintage children’s book illustrations like this one of cavorting fairies:

And this one of three kids on a hilltop:

Luv4sams will make you a bracelet featuring your favorite words from the dictionary:

Ephemeralogie creates fun paperweights using "retro" images, many featuring readers, like this one:

But my FAVORITE find are KokoStudios‘ framed butterflies with wordy wings that are referred to as "Ex Book Worms." (Though I suppose technically they would have had to be book caterpillars.) This particular batch features text from Treasure Island.

The butterflies above would look nice hung alongside this "Bookgirl Print" by Ward Jenkins (a.k.a. Wardomatic) whose Flickr page is one of my favorite places to poke around:

ReFabulous is selling a wallet or card holder featuring Avi’s Midnight Magic:

IKCDesign features some GREAT checkbook covers made from recycled children’s book pages and such. Here’s one from A Light in the Attic:

They also sell this SUPER clever bookends made from recycled records. Here’s The Clash’s Combat Rock, repurposed:

If you like your bling to sport books, consider these earrings from laurenelgee:

I am totally enamoured with this pillow from Pillowphyte that features a stack of books in the center, bordered by fabric sporting text from Dick and Jane books:

A lot of people on Etsy sell journals made from repurposed books. TylerBender rebinds his beautifully, making them pricier than some of the others I’ve seen, but much, much nicer too. You can look at all the options currently available in his Etsy shop OR send him any hardcover book that you’d like to have rebuilt as journals like these:

ISOSC makes toys from recycled books, like this Jacob’s Ladder, made from a hardcover book called Real Estate Principles:

Illustrator Lauren Castillo (whose art graces the pages of What Happens on Wednesdays by Emily Jenkins and Buffalo Music by Tracy E. Fern, among others) has an Etsy shop where she sells prints of some lovely paintings. Here’s "Brooklyn Snow" for example:

If you’ve got a bit more money to burn, take a look at the music boxes jenkhoshbin makes out of old books! I LOVE this idea! Here’s one that was a copy of The Star Rover by Jack London in a previous life:

Remember that fun Olivia fabric I featured way back in February? Well CustomKids used those entertaining patterns to create this fabulous chef’s hat AND a matching apron!

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I know a LOT of librarians who’d love to own a print of this painting called "Penelope" by Erin McGuire, whose shop is paperbones:

Moonlightbindery has finally found a great use for old New Yorker covers — they put them on the cover of a beautiful, coptic bound journal like this one below, featuring an illustration by Dan Clowes (who’s probably best known for Ghost World).

SackReligious is one of many Etsy sellers that creates handbags made from hardcover books, like this "Crossword Clutch", which is perfect for that crossword junkie in your life.

The SackReligious store also currently features this mirror "decoupaged with excerpts from classics including Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, Sherlock Holmes, A Tale of Two Cities, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Romeo & Juliet, The Fall of the House of Usher, and The Time Machine."

Looking for atypical holiday decorations this year? Suspend this "book mobile" made by theshophouse from a discarded copy of The Spirit of Christmas from your ceiling then invite me over to take a look. I think this is so COOL!! 

I love the idea behind the reading-themed wreath below from SurprisetheEyes. Hmm… 

Must consider making my own variation. Perhaps with Shrinky-Dinks, which I’ll be featuring in a post later this week… Artsy-craftsy types, stay tuned!

I attended an advance screening of The Tale of Despereaux this weekend (thanks, Candlewick!) and enjoyed being there surrounded by Despereaux afficiandos and those who knew it both first and best. Illustrator Timothy Basil Ering and his wife were seated one row in front of me, and it was a sincere joy to hear Tim’s WHOOP! of joy when the opening credits began rolling and "The Tale of Despereaux" appeared on the screen. How amazing it must be to breathe life into a writer’s characters then later watch them stand up and speak, literally.

Overall I would say I enjoyed this movie, though I wouldn’t say I "loved" it. If I was to give it a letter grade, I’d say it’s… a B minus, hovering dangerously close to a C plus. What follows are my reasons, though note that there are a few spoilers here!! If you haven’t read the book or you don’t want to know what happens in the movie, you might want to stop reading.

SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!

Things that worked well in this movie:

1. The animation is wonderful. Visually this film is lush. I took notes while I was watching and many of them wound up being about the textures of things I saw and admired — the heavy brocade fabrics that appear throughout the castle, the fur and whiskers of the mice, everything and anything METAL. I thought the animals looked far more realistic than the people, but not to a point that was distracting. On the whole I thought the style of animation chosen for this film was the perfect choice for this particular story.

2. The movie is surprisingly faithful to the book. Events happen in a different order and have been, in some cases, "embellished" quite a bit. And there are a few characters in the movie who didn’t exist in the book or who are portrayed quite differently. (Roscuro is a much more sympathetic and feeling character in the film, for example.) But at the heart of it, this movie really did follow the same basic story as the book, and (more importantly I think) it tries, quite admirably, to capture the real "spirit" of the book. I don’t think it was wholly successful in the latter regard, but I give it lots of points for trying.

3. It doesn’t feel especially "Hollywood." I expected a Disneyfication of Despereaux here — a cutesy, feel-good romp about a small mouse with a big heart who embarks on a very BIG adventure. But (refer to point #2 here), that’s not what this is. If anything, I would argue that a little bit more "Hollywoodization" would have been welcome in places, just to keep things moving at a faster clip and to keep the story from feeling incredibly dark, which it did at times. Still, I like that this movie isn’t a happy-go-lucky version of an emotionally complex story.

4. The cast is good. I am often distracted by celebrity voices in animated films, because I’m too good at matching voices to faces — I can too easily picture each actor standing behind a microphone reading their lines. In this case, though, the actors seemed VERY well-matched to the characters they were portraying, especially William H. Macy as Despereaux’s father and Dustin Hoffman as Roscuro. Though I was a *bit* disappointed at first that Roscuro didn’t have the rich Italian accent that he does in Graeme Malcolm’s utterly SUPERB reading of the book on audio. You can listen to a clip of the audio right here:

5. Some of the "embellishments" work beautifully. The world inhabited by the mice is a fully realized world with houses and buildings and matchstick lanterns, populated by lots and lots of mice wearing fabulous costumes reminicent of Flemish paintings. (The frilly collars and tall hats worn by the Council of Elders are one of my favorite costuming choices!) Likewise the dungeon world inhabited by the rats is a visual feast — detailed and elaborate and breathtaking when you see it for the first time, lit by flickering firelight and peopled with dingy creatures who gamble and cavort and eat, eat, eat, eat, eat. Other movie-created touches that I love: at one point a piece of jewelry worn by the princess saves the day in two critical and clever ways; and the walls of Despereaux’s house have been papered over with pages of books — words are some of the the first things he sees with his open-way-too-early-for-a-normal-mouse eyes.

And then there’s the scene in which Despereaux walks across the pages of an open book, reading its words (which are often several times the length of his body) when he is meant to be eating. The scenes of this mouse on this book are STUNNING, visually. They’re cut with deliberately choppy animations of what Despereaux is imagining as he reads the story — his mental images are of himself as a human knight rescuing a princess, slaying a dragon, carousing with his fellow knights, in a style that’s very reminiscent of Gustaf Tenggren’s illustrations for King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

6. Despereaux is adorable. And lovable. And admirable. And heroic. And everything that you want the hero of a children’s movie (and book!) to be. His first appearance in the film occurs surprisingly far into the film (see below), but the audience around me literally gasped and cooed with delight when a tiny baby mouse with ENORMOUS ears and big eyes appeared on the screen, staring up at the adult mice shake their heads in bewilderment at how odd he is.

7. The key messages of the book are not lost in the movie. They’re incorporated in some very poignant scenes and they’re voiced by the narrator who (in a voiceover) is "telling" us the story. Before Despereaux’s first on-screen appearance we are told, "If you know anything about fairy tales you know that a hero doesn’t appear until the world really needs one." The themes of being brave, being kind, and being forgiving recur throughout the story, in often subtle ways that reinforce these messages. When Despereaux meets with the Thread Master the scene is brief because Despereaux fearlessly launches himself into the darkness (bravery). Roscuro shows Despereaux his greatest treature — the chink in his ceiling through which he can get let in some light (kindness). And there’s a sequence of apologies at the end that is truly lovely (forgiveness).

Things that don’t work so well:

1. The story is too complicated for a children’s movie. There were a number of young children in the theater while I was watching and it was VERY apparent to me that their attention had lagged even before we’d come to the film’s second half. One of the things I love most about the BOOK The Tale of Despereaux is the number of characters whose stories become intertwined in the overall adventure that stars this lovable little mouse. But Kate DiCamillo has plenty of pages to get us there, unlike a movie that has less than two hours in which to accomplish
as
much. In the MOVIE The Tale of Despereaux the stories that intertwine with Despereaux’s tale ultimately seemed like a distraction from the central plot line. Each time we moved away from our big-eared star I wanted him back again. And sometimes we just left him for far, far too long. Odd as this sounds, I think the movie would have worked better had most of the side tangents/characters been left out. It would have worked fine without Miggery Sow, for example, who really doesn’t play a big part here. It would have been fine with Roscuro making fewer or briefer appearances, or (better still) the chef being given less screen time.

2. It’s too scary for young kids. I watched 4 and 5 year-olds file in to see this G-rated movie and felt relatively unconcerned (see positive point #3) until we were shown a preview for Coraline! (Cue nervous whining on the part of the 4.5 year-old behind me, for which I don’t blame him.) Fantastic as Coraline looks to be, it is not for the very young or the relatively young and quite faint-hearted. I was not at all surprised to hear said 4.5 year-old state emphatically, "I don’t want to see the button eyes movie!" when the Coraline trailer was done, but thought he’d be better off once Despereaux… started. Not so.

In what seemed at first like a clever twist, the story begins with Roscuro’s arrival on board a ship that’s sailing into Dor on Soup Day, an annual event in which everyone in the kingdom rejoices to learn what incredible soup king’s chef has prepared this year. (SPOILER ALERT!!) From the chandelier over the royal table, a very lovable and soup-loving Roscuro swoons and PLOP! He lands in the Queen’s soup. She dies. The king outlaws soup and banishes rats. He and the princess both grieve. And Roscuro, who has just been chased by suits of armor, falls through a hole in the kitchen floor and plummets into darkness. At which point the 4.5 year-old behind me starts crying, which is sort of understandable, because we did just see a woman die and we don’t yet know if that friendly rat is dead or not and… That’s a lot to take in during the movie’s first 15 or 20 minutes.

The scariest thing about this movie, though, is one of the things that is the most visually elaborate . In the rats’ below-ground world there is an enormous arena where the rats all gather to watch Coliseum-like "games," which don’t exist in the book and (I think) probably shouldn’t exist in the movie. The first happens immediately after Despereaux’s arrival in the dungeon. One minute we see rats grabbing him, the next minute we see him in the middle of an arena that is overflowing with beady-eyed rats chanting "MOUSE! MOUSE! MOUSE!" until Despereaux’s competition arrives (an enormous cat hampered by a chain so that it can’t launch itself into the crowd and gorge on its captors) at which point the rats begin chanting "EAT! EAT! EAT!" (Scaaaaary.) Scarier still is when this same arena scene is repeated at the end of the movie (BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG SPOILER ALERT!!!) when the rats wheel a prone Princess Pea into the arena, strapped to a flat cart that nearly covers the diameter of the arena floor. The rats hungrily await the sound of the gong that will announce their opportunity to… eat her.

Yep. This is NOT a good choice for your 4.5 year-old!!

More importantly, these arena scenes bring a level of violence to the story that I don’t think needs to be there. There is darkness in the book. There is evil and deep sorrow and scary stuff, and that’s all fine. Somehow the threat of violence on this level, though, feels… base or "crude" relative to the sophistication of the story’s emotional content. 

2. "Show to me my babies!" Despereaux’s mother is one of my favorite characters in the book and without a doubt my favorite voice done by Graeme Malcolm on the audio. (Listen to it! Her French accent is magnifique!) Her strong will and superb one-liners are completely missing from this movie, though, as she’s relegated to the role of "insignificant character," given no unique personality, and overshadowed by her husband. Bummer. Women and girls actually play little part in this movie at all, come to think of it. The Princess Pea is lovely and noble and nice but she also seems rather helpless. She just isn’t given enough screen time to seem three-dimensional, making it seem oddly jarring and out of character when we finally arrive at a scene in which she’s cruel to Mig, whom we’ve barely come to know at all.

3. For a story that moves at a jerky pace, the whole thing wraps up MUCH too quickly. If you’re going to incorporate all these different characters and their perspectives, that’s fine. But then you’d better do them to completion. Instead, Mig’s story (as I’ve already mentioned) seems extraneous and unnecessary, because she’s given too small a part to play and we know too little about her. Her happy ending, then, feels nice but not especially redemptive. She has a sudden change of heart in much the same way that the Princess does in multiple places and Roscuro does and… You get the idea. The only character whose actions always seem understandable and whose reactions don’t seem overly quick or jarring are Despereaux’s. I came away feeling like I just wish this story had been his from start to finish. Tell the others’ perspectives in a different film, or at least in a different way. I think all ages of the movie’s audience would have been better satisfied by a film in which we meet this little mouse and follow his unlikely adventures all the way to the climax of his dramatic story, without all the diversions along the way.

In summary…

You’ll note that I have twice as many positives as negatives listed here. That’s why the film manages to score in the "B" range rather than the "C." for me. Visually I thought this movie was fantastic. But its continuity and pacing were not up to snuff. Take your 7 year-old to see it, but (please, for the sake of those sitting near you) leave your 4.5 year-old at home!

I have only the faintest memory of learning to diagram sentences in elementary school, no memory of what grade I was in at the time, and no recollection of just how to draw those branching pictures now. (I could never have written the book Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences.) But I do remember LIKING the sentence-diagramming process as a kid. I enjoyed the orderliness of drawing those twig-like lines sprouting one from the other, then filling them with words like birds come home to roost.

I was less keen on Venn diagrams when we learned to construct those, but I think maybe it’s just because we were never shown, in our classes, all the fun ways you could apply them to less didactic topics in your life. Jessica Hagy’s recent book Indexed is filled with entertaining diagrams (some Venn, some not) that are a lot more fun than anything I ever drew in school, as are the diagrams you’ll find on her blog thisisindexed.com. Here’s a holiday-themed example:

Below is a snarky but rather entertaining Venn Diagram that I’ve seen on a few t-shirts of late. (If you like it you can order one of your own from Diesel Sweeties.)

Maybe it’s because I’m having a particularly stressful couple of weeks and my desk at work is a disaster, but right now I am VERY taken with the orderliness of diagrams like these, and I seem to be bumping into them with increasing frequency.

One of my favorite comics artists is Kevin Huizenga, whose book Curses occupies a place of honor on Gareth’s and my heavily-laden bookshelves. Kevin Huizenga is himself skilled at sentence diagramming. I know this because a small section of his recent mini-comic Or Else #5 is given over to this very subject. (You can see one frame of it here.) When I was perusing Kevin’s blog earlier this week, I read a short post he wrote about the diagrams writer Caleb Crain drew while reading Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. (See example below.)

I think I might lose my mind long before I completed such an exercise, but still…? The prospect is oddly appealing. Or at least, it might be if I were reading and diagramming any book BUT Gravity’s Rainbow, which I have not read but (based on what I know of it) I have no desire to. 

(One more Kevin Huizenga note: for a good laugh, get your hands on a copy of Untitled, which is his mini-comic featuring nothing but ideas for titles, which are in many cases hysterically funny, and WELL worth the $1.50 you’ll pay for the privilege of reading them.)

When Gareth is beginning to think through a story’s adaptation as a graphic novel, he fills sketchbook pages with thumbnails, imagining the flow of the story, the composition of the frames.  (You can see a few small examples on the book sketches page of his website — click on the images labeled as Beowulf Thumbnails.) There’s something very neat and clean about the appearance of all these little boxes, lined up on beside the other, with a collective story to tell.

I myself am a list-maker. It’s how I organize my day, my ideas, my responsibilities, my thoughts about things. The books I’m reading often contain makeshift bookmarks that are lists of my comments or thoughts or observations on my reading up to that page — these lists become helpful resources later when I’ve finished the book and attempt to write up an actual book review.

But how about you? Do you keep tracking of your reading, your writing, or any other verbal concepts in ways as visual as any of these? Do you have a favorite way of diagramming the world? If so, I’d love to hear about it. Or (better still) send me an example. (ShelfTalker AT Gmail DOT com.)

I received an e-mail from author/illustrator Debra Frasier yesterday in which she explained the following: 

"The Make-A-Wish Foundation has invited Janell Cannon, Eric Carle, Ian Falconer, David Kirk, Ida Pearle, my dear friend, Lauren Stringer (see her new book: Snow, with Cynthia Rylant), and me to create e-cards for holiday sending. One click takes you to an array of illustrations to send, and a donation is made by E! Network to the foundation. The scenes are LOVELY. Visit http://att.eonline.com/on/playapart/maw.jsp and send a few today!"

It’s nice to see that sending someone a (virtual) piece of children’s book art can also punt a little money to a good charitable cause!

As a side note, I second Debra’s suggestion that everyone see Snow by Cynthia Rylant and Lauren Stringer. I’m a big fan, as is Paul O. Zelinsky, judging from his recent review of the book for the NYTBR.

I also received a message yesterday from Oliver Jeffers, whose note made me VERY jealous of those of you on the "other" side of the Atlantic! Here’s what Oliver had to say:

"My second book Lost and Found has been adapted into a short animated film. Though I had my hand in things during development and production, the true heroes are Philip Hunt and the animation crew over at Studio AKA. Narrated by Jim Broadbent and with an original music score by Max Richter, it all came together with pretty amazing results. It will be shown on Channel 4 in the UK at 2.30pm on Christmas Eve, and again at 12.30pm on Boxing Day. For everyone not in the UK or Ireland, you’ll have to wait a bit longer."

(Sigh.)

Can you get a repetitive stress injury from wrapping gifts? Though we are certainly witnessing signs of an economic slowdown, our store is nevertheless in holiday retail mode, our fingers sore from near-constant folding and cutting and taping and ribbon-curling. I’m having a hard time keeping a regular blogging routine as my store routine becomes busier with each passing day. (I say "busier" because it’s not like my usual routine leaves much time for slacking. Sadly.)

One of the more entertaining holiday diversions at our store of late was an event we hosted yesterday starring none other than… SANTA CLAUS. Yep. The guy in red. The jolly old soul. The realio, trulio bringer of loot. 

In what was a very clever, non-traditional publicity scheme, Little, Brown arranged to send us (umm… kids, stop reading here, please) a "professional Santa Claus." They worked with a professional Santa staffing agency (did you know there were such things?) to choose our guy, who was by all accounts PERFECT.

Santa (who goes by the name "Charlie Madden" on non-working days) entertained the audience at our store with a LIVELY reading of Priscilla and the Great Santa Search, then posed for photos with the kids in attendance. Little, Brown provided us with the necessary camera and film to take said photos and send kids home with them in souvenir Priscilla… frames.

I was, sadly, not present for all this jolly fun, but our assistant manager Kym Havens was, and raved about the results, despite our relatively small crowd, which was perhaps diminished by the day’s bad weather or the fact that many local kids had visited with Santa at a town-wide event a few days prior — that guy sure gets around. Kym’s sons Sam and Jack (ages 8 and 10, respectively) were COMPLETELY CAPTIVATED with Charlie’s… I mean SANTA’s, er… "performance" and so flabbergasted when they got to talk with him one-on-one that Jack forgot to tell Santa about the gift he most wanted. (I HATE it when that happens!)

Here’s a Christmas card-worthy photo of Santa with the Havens boys:

Jack and Sam had seen the guy in the big red suit arrive wearing street clothes, which became a topic of conversation later when Santa asked Sam, "So, did you recognize me without my business suit? Not many kids get to see Santa without his business suit!" Both boys decided this would give them definite bragging rights at school, just as Lorna and I can now boast that, yes, Santa got undressed in our office.
 

What books for "grown-ups" should no self-respecting bookstore be without? I said this post would go up on Friday, and it is technically still Friday! (At least, it is for another 10 minutes…) It’s just much later in the day on Friday than I’d planned to be posting. As for WHY this post has been delayed by 15 or so hours, I plead "holiday retail" which is what vaporized 12 hours of my day (no exaggeration). As my apology gift to those of you who’ve been patiently waiting to list your favorite adult titles here, I’m going to allow you to list up to TEN books for today’s category! Yes, TEN!

So, again: What books for "grown-ups" should no self-respecting bookstore be without? You tell me. This week we’ve covered books for teens, middle grade readers, the picture book-age crowd, and wee ones. Now it’s the grown-ups’ turn.

You’re opening a bookstore: what are the first few adult books you’re going to put on your stock list (fiction, non-fiction, poetry — anything)? You are allowed to name up to TEN titles and you are allowed to name the same books that someone else has. But, sorry authors, you are NOT allowed to promote your own titles here. Except for you, Jane Austen.

Tell us booksellers what titles you want/EXPECT to see on our shelves. To get you started I will now attempt to assemble my own list of ten chosen-almost-at-random-from-hundreds-of-possibilities-at-a-VERY-late-hour suggestions here:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (which, like Goodnight Moon, should come pre-installed when you order store fixtures)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
The Dubliners by James Joyce
Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand
The Letters of E. B. White
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder

And now, my patient friends, it’s YOUR turn. Have at it. First, though, I’d just like to say that you’ve been firing off some truly fantastic recommendations all week. I can’t wait to see what you come up with for this one!

We’re in the final stretch of "Build a Bookstore" week, having already suggested must-have books for young adults, the middle grade set, and the picture book crowd. Today we address books for the littlest ones. Tomorrow we weigh in on books for the biggest ones (i.e. adults).

Name up to FIVE books for infants and toddlers (board books, picture books, bath books, cloth books, funky novelty-type books) that you think no self-respecting bookstore should be without! Yes, you can repeat others’ suggestions. No, you can’t mention your OWN books, unless your name is Margaret Wise Brown (which it’s not) or Eric Carle or… you get the idea.

To get the ball rolling, I will now list FIVE books for babies and/or toddlers that I think no store should be without. (Drum roll, please…)

The Very Hungry Caterpillar (board book especially) by Eric Carle
Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt
My Very First Mother Goose edited by Iona Opie, illustrated by Rosemary Wells
Good Night, Gorilla (board book especially) by Peggy Rathmann
Cars and Trucks and Things That Go by Richard Scarry

No doubt you’ve noticed one GLARING omission from my list: Goodnight Moon. I think this book is so beyond "required" for bookstores that it almost qualifies more as a fixture than an actual book. In fact, I think it should just come WITH the shelving that a store orders, if that store plans on carrying any children’s books. For that reason (read: it’s just TOO obvious) I left it off my list. 

That does not mean, however, that you must leave it off yours. Up to five books for babies and toddlers… go!

It’s day three of "Build a Bookstore" week! So far we’ve tackled the challenge of naming five young adult books and five middle grade books no self-respecting bookstore should be without. Today your task (and mine!) is to list UP TO FIVE PICTURE BOOKS (fiction and/or non-fiction!) for lower elementary and/or preschool that you believe should appear on every bookstore’s shelves. Once again, you are welcome to repeat the suggestions of others (thereby giving an additional "vote" to those repeated titles).

I expect there to be a LOT of variation in today’s lists plus a lot of "classics," so that makes even more exruciating for me to limit my own list to JUST five… (What if the others I love don’t get mentioned here??) But so be it. Here, with much grimacing on my part, are FIVE picture books that I think no self-respecting bookstore should be without:

Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes
The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
The Gardener by Sarah Stewart, illustrated by David Small

Okay, that hurt.

Now it’s your turn. Up to FIVE picture books. Have fun.

(On deck for the remainder of this week: books for babies and toddlers tomorrow, books for adults on Friday!)

Yesterday I kicked off this week’s "Build a Bookstore" week by asking you to list up to five young adult novels that you think no self-respecting bookstore should be without, knowing that (of course) no one store can afford to carry everything.

Today your charge is to list up to five middle grade novels and middle grade non-fiction books (meaning non-fiction aimed at upper elementary and/or middle school) you think no self-respecting bookstore should be without. Yes, your list of titles can contain some of the same titles that others’ do. NO, you can’t list more than five titles, even if you find it torturous to limit yourself this way!

Once again I will put myself through the wringer here and list five choices of my own.

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis
Hoot by Carl Hiaasen
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

Such torture! ARGH! And, crud. I just realized I didn’t include a single non-fiction book. But… I stand by these five. No self-respecting bookstore should be without them. Nor should they be without the other titles I know you’re all gearing up to type in right now, so… GO!

What young adult novels and non-fiction should no self-respecting bookstore be without? That’s my question for today, and it kicks off my "Build a Bookstore" theme for the week. Here’s what prompted this discussion.

We recently sold a copy of Dicey’s Song by Cynthia Voight and I decided, after a LOT of hemming and hawing and silently berating myself, NOT to reorder the book. I had already given Homecoming the axe a couple months ago, and now I, in essence, have done the same with this "classic" of young adult literature. WHY? Because that recent sale was the first one we’d had on that title in two years. Homecoming had been sitting for even longer. Given that we barely have enough room to shelve all the books in our YA section, let alone have adequate room for face-outs, I have to be a lot more choosy about how much space I devote to books I consider "important" that just aren’t pulling their monetary weight. We can ALWAYS special order out-of-stock titles for any customers who want them, so it’s not like we’re making these books unavailable — we’re just making them less immediately accessible. And if customers begin requesting them on a slightly more frequent basis (say three times a year rather than once every other year!), and/or if the publisher reissues them with newer (preferably better) covers, I can always alter my decision and put them back in the game. For now, though, they’re effectively "sitting the bench."

As I relegated Homecoming and Dicey’s Song (two books that I loved when I was in junior high) to the sideline, I thought about all those people out there who would think I’d made a terrible decision — who would say that no self-respecting bookstore should be without a copy of these seminal works. And that got me thinking about all the books we booksellers DO hold onto, even when they’re rarely (if ever) purchased by customers. As a buyer, you can only have so many of these designated "classics" before your store runs the risk of being something akin to a non-circulating library, rather than a profit-turning bookstore. But those MUST-HAVE books do exist! And I know for a fact that the list of titles that make that list differs from store to store, buyer to buyer, even reader to reader.

SO, this week I’m putting the question to you knowledgeable, book-loving folks. What books should no self-respecting bookstore be without? To make this a more interesting discussion/more helpful list of suggestions for stores, I’m limiting each day’s submissions to a specific age category. This will also give you more time to think about each of these categories before you’re prompted to supply your thoughts!
 
I’m placing another limit on you too: up to FIVE books per commenter. That’s it. You are allowed to name no more than five books for each age group. Putting this limit on your suggestions will (I hope) force each of you to really think about which books are true must-haves for any one batch.

Today’s topic is young adult novels and YA non-fiction (prompted by my aforementioned decision regarding Dicey’s Song).

TUESDAY will be middle grade novels and non-fiction for upper elementary/middle school.

WEDNESDAY will be picture books and non-fiction for lower elementary/preschool.

THURSDAY will be books for babies and toddlers (board books, picture books, bath books, cloth books, assorted odd novelty formats for little tykes).

FRIDAY will be (what the heck?) books for grown-ups. Because I know some of you actually read those too!

So: back to today’s topic. Your task is to list UP TO FIVE young adult novels and/or non-fiction books you think no self-respecting bookstore should be without. Yes, your list of titles can contain some of the same titles that others’ do. If the same title crops up repeatedly, that’ll suggest to the rest of us that that particular title is especially worthy (or "important’) by consensus.

I’ll go first (boy, is this hard!)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (an instant classic, in my book)
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Tangerine by Edward Bloor
Monster by Walter Dean Myers
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

ARGH! I can’t tell you how painful that was, or how many titles wound up on the cutting room floor. I’m hoping those not included in my list of must-haves will show up in yours, so have at it! (And starting thinking NOW about what middle grade novels you’re going to list tomorrow…)