This past Tuesday the New England Children’s Bookselling Advisory Council met in Sturbridge, Mass., for the first of four meetings of the year. Our meeting was well attended and while it’s always great to see friends, it was great to see so many new voices. One of my favorite parts of NECBA meetings is the title sharing at the end of every meeting.  Below are selections that were the books that everyone is excited about. Some of these books are out now, but most are coming out later throughout the rest of the spring, and even the summer.

These are in no particular order. Of the books are currently out people seemed to love Trapped by Michael Northrop. And with a winter that just won’t stop, it seems all too fitting. Another book that several folks talked about was Exposed, the debut novel by Kimberly Marcus. Told in free verse, it deals with a tough subject really well. Other folks loved, loved the follow-up book to the Quiet Book, The Loud Book. Just as satisfying as the original with the same glorious examples of loud and stunning art to match.

There was universal excitement about Kevin Henkes’ Junonia.

We always get excited when Kevin comes out with something new, and this one seemed to please all the advanced readers. Another perennial favorite, Sarah Dessen, is back with a sure-fire summer hit, What Happened to Goodbye. A restaurant theme permeates this YA novel about a girl trying to figure out who she really is and who she wants to be.  Another solid writer with a big following is Gary Schmidt, and his newest, Okay for Now, is the funniest book that was title-shared.
A big departure from Lauren Myracle’s usual fare is her realistic, gritty YA novel that tackles what could be a hate crime in a small town. Shine is not an easy read, but several NECBA members found it gripping and very well done.
But the book that generated the  most buzz was Libba Bray’s new novel, out early summer, Beauty Queens. Crash a plane of teen beauty pageant contestants on a tropical island and see what happens. This is funny, disturbing, and ultimately a “very feminist novel,” said Suzanna Hermans, who is desperate for the rest of us to read it so she can talk about it. And if that’s not high praise for a book, I’m not sure what is. And judging by the number galleys of it that were taken at lunch, Suzanna will soon have lots of friends to talk to about the book.

There’s a scene in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters where Michael Caine’s character initiates flirtation (okay, yes, with his sister-in-law; not the point here) with a book of poetry. It’s an intimate gift, it’s a risk, it’s personal. It’s romantic. He urges her to read the poem on page 112, e.e. cummings’ poem with the famous lines, “nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.” It moves her and seduces her.
GI Jane is an action movie about a woman trying to break the gender barrier in Navy SEAL training. A series of harrowing experiences pits her against the tough, deeply skeptical Command Master Chief, whom she eventually saves in real battle conditions. At the end of her training, she finds that he’s left his own well-worn copy of a poetry anthology in her locker. Circled in red is D.H. Lawrence’s “Self-Pity:”

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself

This is the poem the commander started every training season with; it was the poem he aimed scornfully at the lone female recruit on her first day. Now, it signifies his admiration and gratitude. No gift could have been more meaningful to its recipient.
I’m sure you get where I’m going here. There is just something about a book passed from one set of hands to another that enhances, even transcends, its contents.
Somehow, I just can’t think that either of the above-mentioned gifts would have packed the same punch if the poem had been emailed, printed out and handed over, or sent as an e-gift. A book has its unique heft and weight and texture; it changes over time, edges softening, pages acquiring evidence of its history with a reader (fingerprints, a drop of spilled orange juice, marginalia). Receiving a book from a new love interest, especially a book from his or her personal collection, is as intimate as receiving a worn piece of clothing, and often more revealing. The book even smells like that person’s life. Best of all, he or she has held it! With those beautiful hands!
Today, a customer came in for a book she is giving as a gift to someone she has a crush on. It was a book of essays on art. “Do you think it’s too… obvious?” she asked. I loved the question, loved particularly the fact that, because of what an exchanged book signifies, the answer to that question could actually be yes.

Okay, I don’t generally think it’s a great idea for children to have credit cards. But sometimes kids get credit card gift cards, and that’s adorable. Picture a little five-year-old new reader paying with an American Express gift card. Maybe it was my mood, but Sunday, there was nothing cuter.
Two sisters came in during a fairly intense snowstorm and slowly picked out books. The older sister was trying in vain to help her younger sister, but all I kept hearing was, “That’s too scary.” “That’s too hard.” I admired the older sister’s attempt to find a book. I felt like she was a young bookseller who was just missing the mark.
After the little one finally found some books, she came up to the counter. Picture Cindy Lou Who approaching the desk and asking in her cutest Who-voice, “Do you take American Express?” I tried really hard not to laugh, but couldn’t suppress a grin.  I told her we took AmEx and she skipped back to her parents and said,”I can pay for these!”
The whole family came to the register and each sister paid for her stack separately with her own American Express gift card. The card gets rung through the credit machine like a real credit card with receipts, that have to be signed. So, here’s our new reader, little Cindy Lou Who, being asked to sign her name. I wasn’t sure how this was going to go, but it went well with the laser focus of someone signing the deed to their new house, complete with a tiny flower at the end of the signature line.
I was charmed to bits.  I think maybe training a child so young to use a credit card is probably not a great idea, but these girls respected their budgets and their parents were not the types to run out and get these kids real credit cards — in fact they were somewhat bemused about the entire transaction.
Good thing for me, both kids had money left on their cards, so I’m hoping to see them again.

Well, after almost 15 years of having the store, it has happened. A customer asked me to remove a book from my shelves.
This has never happened before. We’ve had people move books they thought were objectionable, but never has someone looked me in the eye and said, “Are you the owner? I want you to remove this book because it makes fun of childhood sexual abuse.” I apologized that she found the book objectionable and gave her a refund.
The book in question is My First Dictionary: Corrupting Young Minds One Word at a Time by Ross Horsley. Does this book cross the line of good taste? Sometimes, sure it does. But honestly, so do lots of humor books. Parts of the book are laugh-out-loud funny, and parts of it made me cringe. I try to warn customers that sometimes it’s a little bleak. There are some letters about abandonment and parental drinking that seem particularly cruel.
The customer went on to say, “This book is not appropriate in a children’s store.” To which I countered, half my store is made up of adult books. And besides, one person’s unhappiness is not enough of a reason to pull a book. If that were the case we’d never sell Goodnight Moon, Love You Forever, or Harry Potter because plenty of people have issues with those books. And I’ll be honest, I really bristle at the phrase “it’s not appropriate in a children’s store.” Well, parents shop in children’s stores and often the “objectionable” books are well out of reach of kids.
This brought up  a larger issue. When does curation of a collection cross the censorship line? I like to think of myself as a fairly open-minded buyer who doesn’t reject a book because it’s objectionable. I don’t buy certain books because I don’t think they’ll sell or they’re not a good fit for my customer base. Is that act one of censorship? Now I’m wondering about all my buying.
I will order anyone anything, even if I hate the topic or the book. That’s not my place, to judge someone’s book buying.  Obviously, my goal in stocking my store is not to have books people find offensive and therefore won’t buy. But some people find David Sedaris and Mary Karr objectionable, and I love them and will continue to stock and recommend their books.
So where is the line? I have puzzled over this ever since the customer left and I still don’t know.

Today I received my first (very early!) invitation to a publisher dinner at BookExpo America in May. These dinners are so wonderful, one of the highlights of a bookseller’s year. A publisher will bring phenomenal authors and illustrators to some delicious restaurant with a quiet room (or a rooftop garden, or a museum, or a boat, etcetera) and invite a group of booksellers to feast with them. Some of these dinners are quite small and intimate; others are full-scale parties. Before the economy tanked, some of these festivities were outrageously elaborate. Whatever the size or venue, they are pretty magical. Publishers invite store owners and book buyers to these dinners. The featured authors and artists are scattered around the room or table(s), and often shift stations between each course to give all of the booksellers an opportunity to become acquainted with them. It’s such a terrific opportunity to hear behind-the-scenes inspiration and anecdotes about the making of books, and to get to know the three-dimensional people behind the stories we love. It certainly gets us fired up about the great books and authors featured.
It takes a while for a new store to start getting invitations, since the groups are often limited to 8 or 12 booksellers. As a rookie store owner back in the mid-1990s, I was lucky enough to have found a mentor in the magnificently sharp, funny, brilliant (and well-read) Carol Chittenden of Eight Cousins in Falmouth, Mass. Before I’d ever even heard of publisher dinners, she was the one who put a quiet bee in a few important ears suggesting that Josie and I be included in a dinner or two. Every bookseller should be so fortunate to have a Carol.

Back then, we had a tiny store in a tiny town of 3,500 (as opposed to our current small store in a small town of 6,000), and certainly didn’t do enough in sales to attract the attention of any publisher. But when Carol speaks, people listen, and her thoughtfulness earned us chairs at some pretty lofty tables, which led to meeting bigger-name authors from all over the country, which led to some really successful author events, which kept us in the eye of those publishers. Had Chitts, as we like to call her, not taken us under her wing, I’m not sure how long it might have taken for us to have a seat at the table, as it were, in the bookselling/publishing world.
So publishers, as you gather your lists together for those BEA dinners, I invite you to think about asking your sales reps and longtime bookseller contacts to point out one or two up-and-coming booksellers you might otherwise overlook. It’s a generous gesture that means more to those new owners and buyers than you’d ever imagine — inspiring and energizing them and earning you a sweet spot in their hearts — and just might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

As more and more customers come in asking me when I’ll start selling e-books, I find myself wondering what does that mean for me and my store. These are regular customers who have embraced the Shop Local ethos and want to support my bookstore while they buy books a new way. These are customers who have e-readers and also continue to buy books. But is their buying an e-book at my store ultimately going to help my business or hurt it? We all know that Amazon has done with e-books what they do with bestsellers: they deeply discount them, so deeply that few can compete with the prices.
However, this week with Random House’s announcement that they will sell e-books on the agency model, the playing field changes dramatically for the better. Honestly, I’m not sure yet what this actually means to me, just as I’m not sure what e-books will do to the indies. As an independent bookstore, I am struggling with where e-books need to fit in my store model. Google Books makes it easy to sell e-books if your store has an American Booksellers Association Indie Commerce website, but if you don’t have one, then it gets more complicated, as Google Books hasn’t rushed to embrace having affiliates.
Do I try to offer the very book format that might well be the end of the book as some doomsayers theorize? Or do I cede this market share to the places people have already been trained to go for them? This is the question of the year for many booksellers, and I grapple with this daily. It’s so hard to know what to do. I still offer books for sale on my website and there are still a myriad of places where people can buy books. How important will e-books be to my bottom line? I just don’t know and that is the question that worries me every day.
So, booksellers, readers, and other folks who enjoy this blog, please weigh in. What do you see as the future of e-books and independent bookstores? Can the two co-exist happily, or is the relationship already too fraught to succeed?

Booksellers lament, quite frequently, about how publishers could do more to help the indies. We need more co-op money and more promotional efforts that actually work. While stickers and tattoos are lovely, sometimes we need something that helps the bottom line. I do not intend this post to be an ad for Penguin, but they’ve come up with a program that works for booksellers and the publisher.
Penguin has started a great new program called the Penguin Dozen. This is a program that runs for a full year, starting March 1st. Bookstores that sign up commit to buying 20 books a month of the featured picture book character. When I first heard of the program I thought, great, 20 books a month I don’t need. But then I read the promo materials again. We’re talking The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Winnie the Pooh, Skippyjon Jones, Ladybug Girl, Spot, Llama Llama, Madeline and more.
These are books I sell anyway and they’re good books.  Now, this is  a promotion I can get behind. I order 20 books (they can be paperback), and set up a display in the picture book section featuring the character’s books. The great thing about this promo is it just reminds me to keep my backlist current with these characters. I’m not ordering 20 books I don’t need, and this is why this will work for me. To keep the promo fun there is a dedicated website for the Penguin Dozen. Each character has his or her own page full of activity sheets, fun ideas for parents and children to do together. My sales rep, Nicole Davies, has forwarded a year-long backlist order form with ISBNs, titles and price. Really, this couldn’t be easier. And that’s why it works.
– I don’t have to do any paperwork. This is huge. I emailed my rep and she took care of the details. I was even reminded of the two backlist deals that I could take advantage of to save even more money on this promo. So, I cut and pasted ISBNs and ordered books I was embarrassingly out of, saved money, and fulfilled my monthly obligation for eight months of the Penguin Dozen all the while saving money doing ti.
– I want these books. And often, there’s a new title coming out, so I’m likely to need backlist to help sell the new title.
– Part of the plan gets me two free costume rentals. This is an enormous savings of big shipping costs. While the costumes usually can be rented free, the shipping for the oversized package can set you back a couple hundred.
– Planning a year ahead makes me a better bookseller. Our 15th anniversary is coming up in September and having some character events is a great way to kick off the fun.
– It’s easy. I cannot stress this enough. This is as good as picking up an extra 3% discount when I order 5 copies of a book I know I’ll sell. Easy co-op works really well.
– My sales rep is doing all the work. I know this sounds selfish, but all I’ve had to do is make an order, and that’s fun. Oh, and I had to make a phone call about reserving the costumes. I think I can handle that level of busyness.
– Other publishers are making co-op easier, and that is so appreciated.  I believe that the easier co-op gets, the more we’ll order and ultimately sell. And that’s good for everyone’s bottom line.
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On the heels of my enthusiastic post about the Ellen Raskin reissues, I want to put in a bid for two semi-lost gems that I—as a bookseller, not just as a reader—would like to see back in print. I say semi-lost, because they aren’t actually out of print; they’re simply unavailable in my favorite editions.
One is the 1943 Katherine Woods translation of The Little Prince, the one that mesmerized me as a child. I know the 2000 Richard Howard translation is considered to be more accurate, and I’m perfectly happy for that edition to co-exist with the one I grew up and fell in love with; I just want to be able to offer the earlier translation to customers, too. Its poetry and rhythms are lovely. I knew lines and even pages by heart, and I read the passage about the taming of the fox at my mom’s memorial service. I used to make my college boyfriends read it. It’s a little like the difference between the King James version of the Bible and the newer editions. I like the old-fashioned quality of Woods’s language; it flavors the story and suits the quaint formality of the little prince himself.
I had a customer in the store this week who bought and returned the newer version because she “hated” this translation. As unfair as these complaints are to lob at a translator merely trying to provide a more direct translation of the original, I think there’s something to be said for allowing readers to choose their own preferred translation by offering both. It’s not rational, our attachment to the words that shape us; it’s visceral. The nostalgia factor cannot be overestimated when it comes to selling children’s books. People want the editions that were touchstones for them—and they usually want those editions in hardcover.
My other request is a fervent appeal to reissue the Nancy Eckholm Burkert version of Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach. The story is still available illustrated by Quentin Blake (whose art in general I adore, and whose Edward Eager cover redesigns dramatically revitalized sales of those books, at least at our store), but I think something was lost when the Burkert version went out of print. Quentin Blake is a master of whimsy; Burkert’s art combined whimsy with gravity, like the story itself. Her softly glowing, magical, striking illustrations haunted my imagination as a child, resonating at a very deep level.
What I wish for is not to replace the Blake edition (and I see that a new graphic novel with art by Jordan Crane is coming in March) but to reinstate the Burkert hardcover as well — matte dust jacket and all.  We can keep the Blake for the paperback, fine by me. Just give us the choice of hardcovers, and let us introduce a new generation of kids to the strange and wonderful peach-y art in that original edition.
If there’s anything a children’s bookseller knows, it’s that people are passionate and proprietary about specific editions of their favorite books. I’d say that in our field, nostalgia drives 25%-30% of picture book and middle grade sales. (Imagine, for a moment, trying to sell Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel—a book that softens the expression of even the grumpiest grandpa—if it had different illustrations. Sales would screech to a halt.) So, publishers, how about it? Bring back these delicious editions we love and can handsell like nobody’s business to the parents and grandparents who come in looking for them.
Readers, are there any older editions of in-print books you’d like to see again?

I received an email the other day from an earnest author wanting me to look at her manuscript for possible publication. This post is a letter for all of you out there who want to be writers. Please follow these few steps and you’ll find your relationship with your local bookstore much more productive.
– Use your bookstore as a resource. Go to as many author events as you can. They’re free and they provide a wonderful chance to meet and speak with successful authors and find out their path to getting published.
– Do not take advantage of the staff. They are there to sell books, not to research which publisher is most likely to be receptive to your picture book about a dragon who drives a tractor. That kind of research is your job as a writer. It’s important to know which publisher is the most likely to be receptive to your manuscript, and the only way to know that is to read, read, read as much as you can. You can get books from the bookstore or the library, it doesn’t matter, just keep reading.
– Use the Internet to your advantage. While we may order books, we often don’t know who the editors are, and this info is out there on the Internet if you go to the publisher’s web site. You can learn so much by researching authors, editors and agents on the web, and that can be invaluable to a writer’s career.
– Do not bring your manuscript to the bookstore to see if someone there will read and critique it. We are booksellers, not editors. I don’t bring my home remodeling sketch to the guy at the hardware store for review, because that’s not what he does.  Do not have hurt feelings about this, it’s just the way it is. Asking your local bookseller to review your manuscript puts her in a very awkward situation. If the manuscript isn’t good, and the bookseller is honest, they risk hurting your feelings and jeopardizing your relationship with the bookstore. If it is good, all the bookseller can do is tell you it’s good and then the rest is up to you.
– Join the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators immediately. This is one of the best resources for new writers. They have workshops on how to submit to a manuscript, sessions with editors, and regional chapters that are wonderful for networking.
– Keep writing and when your book gets published let your local store know, because they’d love to have a book launch party for you.

This time of year, when we’re taking sales meeting after sales meeting with reps, I find myself looking through catalogs to see if any of my old favorites have come back into print. And the fantastic thing is, they often do.
Editors are passionate book lovers, and as they grow in stature at their various houses, they are often able to advocate successfully for OP titles and bring them to market. Until recently, reissued titles have had a hard time getting the kind of marketing push their newer counterparts enjoy, and therefore often languish unnoticed on bookstore shelves until, a year or so later, they go back OP again.
With the advent of social networking, I think publishers now have the best opportunity they’ve ever had to get the word out to target audiences eager for these reissues. These days, it’s possible to alert (for free, no less!) not only the “gatekeepers”—booksellers, librarians, and teachers—who remember and love those books, but diehard fans of the author whose Goodreads and LibraryThing shelves include those books and who spend time in chat groups devoted to those authors. Simple Google searches can lead publicists to fan groups. Publishers can create Facebook pages for the authors and their reprinted works, send tweets (that can be retweeted) to “big mouths” in the children’s literature field, and set up blog tours (perhaps not for the authors, who may be long gone from this world, but for their characters). All of these (and a skajillion things those clever, creative publicists can cook up) might help rescued treasures books reach a broad new audience.
Generalities aside, I am overjoyed to see Ellen Raskin’s books back in print from Dutton! And with fantastic covers that do justice to the spirit and liveliness of Raskin’s writing. She was one of my childhood literary heroes—quirky, funny, totally original. There was simply no one like Raskin; her books were as distinctive and recognizably hers (and yet different from one another) as those by today’s Daniel Pinkwater and Jack Gantos. All of them were filled with puzzles and wordplay, mysteries and slapstick, unforgettable characters and huge generosity of heart and scope. And Raskin was quite an artist; I recently discovered that she illustrated one of my favorite editions of A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas (from New Directions, and still in print).
‘Most everyone knows Raskin’s Newbery Award-winning The Westing Game, which I believe has never gone out of print, but her other novels have been unavailable almost as long as I’ve had the bookstore, or perhaps longer. (It’s hard to keep track of books going in and out of print, I confess.) Now a whole new generation of kids (and adults) can discover the rest of Raskin’s delightful, fun, smart mysteries: The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel), The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues, and the Newbery Honor book, Figgs & Phantoms. Dutton is also very smartly bringing out simultaneous hardcover and paperback editions of these titles, which came out in January. Ingram’s iPage lists A Murder for Macaroni and Cheese as releasing in May. Wahoo!
Is anyone else as excited as I am about Ellen Raskin back in print?