Last night, I was all set to work on my post about the change in bookstore shopping patterns with kids in school. I work on a laptop. I love my computer — it’s easy, it’s portable and the keys light up when it’s dark. I love my laptop except when I accidently dump a microbrew on the keyboard. It was a sad, sad moment when I realized that not only was my keyboard no longer lighting up, my entire computer practically sizzled to darkness. Compounding the problem was my eagerness to dry the computer off, with a hair dryer (not something I recommend) which caused me to literally melt four keys off my keyboard. So, now I am staying at work late to recreate my blog post.

I wanted to talk about the change in kids and shopping patterns now that school has started again. The biggest change for the Flying Pig is that for the first month or two of high school, we seldom see our usual teenage readers. I feel bad for them. They have so much homework, they have no time to read for pleasure. Throw sports practice in the mix and sometimes we don’t see these kids until Christmas break. While there is a dearth of adolescents, there is a fairly large upswing in newly emergent readers.

This time of year our sales of leveled readers and chapter books goes up. I’m stunned anew at how quickly kids learn to read and how fast they can progress from a struggling reader to a fluent one in a matter of months, sometimes weeks. Parents are happy — thrilled usually — to support their new reader and start building a library of "read-alone" books when the time comes. What I like about this age is the kids are expressing opinions about what they’d like to read by themselves and what they still want read to them. As the nights get cooler and dark descends earlier, the tradition of families reading together can really take hold without the distraction of summer’s light and activity.

Parents come in the store and can actually browse at their leisure. There are no kids pulling them in different directions, no little ones demanding attention during the school day, so they can take sometime to be thouhgtful about the books they will add to the home library for the kids and themselves. These browsing adults suddenly want harder books to read. Gone, very rapidly, are the lighter books of summer. It always amazes me how quickly people’s reading shifts when the weather changes. I suspect a lot of that is driven by the great adult releases of the fall. (And if you’re not aware, this fall is shaping up to be one of the best I’ve seen in all my years of bookselling.)  I guess as the kids go back to school, parents can find the time to read.

Teachers, of course, come in to fill out their classroom libraries. What I love about this is that the teachers take the time to get to know their students and then they come in to supplement their libraries. Teachers with a list thrill me. They’re organized and I really just have to point them in the right section and they’re filling their baskets.

And finally, the last category of shopper here in New England is the leaf peeper. They come to see the leaves change color. These guys generally plan ahead. While the leaves haven’t started to change yet, the peepers are already here, waiting. And buying Christmas presents.