A sprinkling of treats to enliven your day:
1) Christoph Niemann’s Abstract City blog post, Let it Dough, from the New York Times, in which he explains the world—through cookie dough, natch.
2) A particularly wonderful flash-mob Christmas song in a crowded mall.
3) Our fabulous Candlewick sales rep, Deb Woodward, shared this sugar plum of a discovery. It’s an actor impersonating legendary German filmmaker Werner Herzog reading children’s books and philosophizing about their hidden existential explorations and psychological subtexts. They’re very funny:
Curious George
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
Madeline
Where’s Waldo?
4) Sir Ian McKellan visits a class of extraordinary ordinary children, is moved by their performance of a selection from Hamlet, and shares his love of Shakespeare with them. I also found this inspiring video of their teacher, Rafe Esquith (Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire, etc.), talking about how to help kids develop honor and focus in a distracted, often dishonorable world. And — if you go to YouTube and search for the Hobart Shakespeareans, you will find a wealth of great videos showing these kids in action. It’s so fantastic to see fifth-graders performing Shakespeare, understanding what they’re saying, and expressing it with passion and commitment. Love!
5) This just in from Mediabistro via The Huffington Post: It’s worth visiting Twitter for a new meme called #BookstoreBingo, in which booksellers and customers tweet funny things overheard in bookstores.
Examples:
@AaronsBooks: #bookstorebingo “I’m looking for a book tha’s about *this* big, and has something to do with a Christmas tree, don’t know author or title”
@ThrillDetective: #bookstorebingo (Mother to daughter, holding up copy of Hugo’s Les Miserables): “Look, honey, now there’s even a book!”
@bookmonger: Where’s your section on books about twirling fire? #bookstorebingo
edparnell “I want Mein Kampf” “Who is it by?” “Hitler” “Hitler who?” “Adolf Hitler. You don’t know him?” “I can’t know every writer” #BookstoreBingo
rockcitybooks Best OH yesterday: a mom praising e-books to her 18 y.o.-ish daughter; daughter protests: “But I *love* the feel of paper!” #bookstorebingo
@Brilliant_Books: #bookstorebingo. Overheard: “I forgot what a great selection of books they have here”. Makes it all worthwhile. 🙂
Got any literary laughs or inspirations you’d like to share?
Here’s wishing everyone plenty of these, as well as warm homes, simple pleasures, and cozy family read-alouds as we head toward the end of 2010 and into a brand new year. See you next week.

One thing we love about this season is the way it brings long-time customers back to the store: kids home from college, out-of-state customers in town to visit relatives, local folks who live closer to our old location and haven’t been in for a while, but make a point of doing their holiday shopping with us. It’s been old home week here at The Flying Pig, and that’s a blast. It makes me realize we’ve put down strong roots here for 14 years, and that soon, some of our early young readers are probably not too far away from bringing their own little ones to the store. The first time that happens will be a strange and wonderful moment, indeed.
This season also brings some utterly heartwarming surprises. On Friday, a customer—Carol, one of those particularly friendly, bookloving people we always love to see walk in the door—came in with a giant fruit basket that seemed to weigh more than she does.

She wrote a beautiful card thanking us for being here in town. It was the kindest, most thoughtful and unexpected gesture—and the delicious apples, pears, oranges, clementines, bananas, grapes, grapefruits (and even a melon!) sustained our numerous staff members over the long, busy weekend. (Note to booksellers: having grapes on hand turned out to be the best snack ever; a quick sugar burst that doesn’t make you crash later.)

We even got to see some of our favorite furry friends. One customer, Karlie, brought in her two border terriers, and I caught one (nine-year-old Pumpkin) browsing among the classics with the alert intensity common to all truly avid readers. She was probably looking for Jack London. I had to take a picture.

And finally, it must be said that we do love the hustle and bustle of the season, and what that does for the bottom line. So far, it’s been a terrific December. Not sure if people are feeling the sting of the economy a little less, or if they’re appreciating local business a little more, or if they are relishing the solid, tangible, beautiful, restful simplicity of the physical book (a simplicity, however, containing multitudes) in the face of our noisy, cluttered onscreen lives. Whatever the case, customers are certainly buying books, loving books, and giving books to friends, neighbors, coworkers, and loved ones. And that’s a pretty heartening endcap to a challenging year.

Last week I wrote a Mock Caldecott post, so it’s only fair to have a Mock Newbery one, as well. This is always harder for me because, well, it just is. But I will soldier on and make some predictions. (Elizabeth also plans to post her Newbery and Caldecott thoughts soon.)
The winner is, or should be (in my opinion, of course): Forge by Laurie Halse Anderson. I think she should have won for Chains (or at least gotten an Honor). This series is outstanding and it’s historical fiction at its best.
The honorees:
– The Keeper by Kathi Appelt
– Zora and Me by Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon
– One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
– Touch Blue by Cynthia Lord
– The Dreamer by Pam Muñoz Ryan
– Countdown by Deborah Wiles
Who do you think will win? What book is your favorite that you’d love to see win? As always, I’ll have a post-award post where I mention the person who got the most right – that person will get the coveted ShelfTalker Shout Out.

I know all of us are crazy busy during the last week before Christmas, but that’s no reason to skip having a Mock Caldecott and Newbery.
This year’s Caldecott field is rich with many great books, some from previous winners, newbies to the Caldecott arena and a book or two that aren’t eligible because the illustrators don’t live in the USA.

I think this could be the year Elisha Cooper finds himself with some Caldecott bling for Farm.

The Quiet Book is one the best books of the year, but I’m pretty sure it’s not eligible because the illustrator, Renata Liwska, lives in Canada. The rules for Caldecott eligibility are pretty clear, but I think it might be limiting to say that an illustrator whose American book cannot win the award if they’re not a resident of the USA. But is it fair that a book that is beloved by children, booksellers and parents not be eligible if the illustrator happens to live in Canada or France?

I feel the same way about The Chicken Thief, one of the most charming books of the year, but it can’t win because the illustrator lives in France.

Okay, I’m done lamenting. Here are a few more contenders:

– Shark Vs. Train illustrated by Tom Lichtenfeld, written by Chris Barton

– Country Road ABC by Arthur Geisert

– Children Make Terrible Pets by Peter Brown

– Snook Alone illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering, written by Marilyn Nelson

What do you think is in contention for the Caldecott? As always, I’ll try to do a round-up of who got the Medal and Honorees and announce the winner of our mock Caldecott, who’ll get a coveted ShelfTalker Shout Out after the awards is announced in January.

We’ve all heard of elves. Some of us believe in them, and others choose not to. I am a believer. While I’ve never actually seen an elf, I know they are real because every December, something wonderful happens at the store. I leave and go home and when I come back in the morning whole areas of the store have been transformed. Almost nightly. It’s weird.
I come in every morning and I have to take a long look around to see what magic the elf has done during the night. Recently, one morning I came in and the entire front part of the store had been rearranged. Not just a little bit changed, but a lot, like every single shelf of our three sections for gift ideas and stocking stuffers. I have to admit something, I know the elf. Her name is Elizabeth and I’m blessed to have her as my partner at the store.
You see, we’re total opposites: I get to work at 8:30 every day during the holidays and she comes in later, staying well past midnight making it look great. All elves need space to work, and wholesale rearranging cannot happen during the day. Recently, we got a huge shipment of stocking stuffer doodads. As I received them, I kept wondering where all these things were going to go. I looked around the already full store and just scratched my head and took some aspirin.

I came in the next morning and voila! Beauty had not only won out, but now all these lovely impulse buys were clearly visible and easy to reach. Silly things like light-up duck, cow and sheep pens sell quite well in a rural state. It’s amazing what folks will buy if they can actually see it. This might be the one lesson I take away from all of this: if folks can’t see it, especially the smaller, non-book items, they’re not going to buy them. The amount of work it took to set these displays up is actually a little mind-boggling. First, the old display had to move (how it’s all been incorporated into the store is a mystery to me) and then everything had to get placed. But it’s not that simple, because as anyone whose set up a display knows, it’s seldom right the first time, or third.

One of the things elves do well is sense what might sell well. On the left, there are plates with a man’s face and a woman’s face on them, and they’re designed to have the diners playing with their food. At first I thought, seriously? Plates with faces? Well, they’ve been out a sum total of two days and we’re almost out. People are buying them, not for their children, but for gifts for friends or for their own use at cocktail parties. Wow, smart elf — and she’s friendly. I’ve even got a picture to prove it.

I wonder what she’ll do tonight?

As if the end of the year weren’t hectic enough, most publishers have December 31st deadlines for claiming co-op monies. The amount of co-op earned is a percent of the money spent with the publisher during the year. Stores get money for direct sales (right from the publisher) or indirectly (through distributors), and a separate “pool” for newsletters and events. It should be easy, right? But somehow getting the co-op claims ready at the end of the year just seems to suck the life blood out of me.
Publishers give us free money, but they make us work for it, and honestly, who could blame them for it? You want free money, you might have to fill out a paper or two. The problem arises when all the publishers have different policies and different forms. It’s like when I applied to college when every school had its own application, essay and other requirements. Now there’s the Common App, which can be submitted electronically. Oh, what a novel concept: all the different colleges working together to make it easier to apply to them. Oh, wouldn’t that be a lovely idea.  Just as we have Edelweiss, the online source for lots of publishers’ catalogs, why couldn’t we have one central place to get co-op forms and submit them electronically? But I digress.
Co-op deadlines are firm. If  a store doesn’t spend its earned money by the end of the year, they lose it, never to be seen again. There is no roll-over for co-op, so it’s imperative to get on the ball and spend the last of your money. I now have a part-time staffer whose only job is helping me get organized with my co-op claims. There are several things I’m learning from this experience.
First, I need to be better organized. One store I know has literally priced out every inch of their store, so when they feature a book  in the front window for a week, two weeks or three weeks, they have a pre-made form which they just fill out, take a picture and send it in. Oh, how easy is that? Much better than my last-minute scrambling to find my newspaper tear sheets and invoices.
Second, I need to claim every last bit of co-op I can. There’s no reason why I can’t ask for co-op from a publisher who has no established co-op policy. I’m learning that the old adage “nothing ventured, nothing gained” most definitely applies to co-op. You can’t know if you’ll get some money for an awesome event, especially if you’ve ordered a lot of books in support of the event.
And lastly, I’m going to be more pro-active and claim my co-op as it occurs, when I actually have events and special promotions, rather than waiting for the very end of the year. I’m busy enough this time of year that I’m actually get color-coded emails from my co-op person so I know what parts of the email to skip, because let’s face it, co-op talk can turn into a pretty dull dissertation pretty quick. But I need to get past the boredom and realize that credits on my monthly statements are lovely to discuss.

As a counter point to a post from last week, Holiday Wish List, I’m adding my two cents for ways to make the end of the year go smoothly for booksellers and customers. .
– While most bookstores give their staff some kind of bonus (I hope), don’t forget to give your UPS/Fed-ex and mail carrier a little something at the end of the year, too. Without them we’d really have a hard time getting our books on the shelves. I usually give a gift card to the store as most of the delivery guys have children in their lives and it’s a nice way of making them customers and not just be the guys with the boxes.
– Self-published authors or new reps for sidelines should not come to any store in December and expect anyone to be able to talk to them about their book or product. This is our busiest time of the year and while you might think it would be a great time to sell your book, you should have thought about approaching your local store in October or November when staff would have been much more receptive.
– If the sales staff seems really rushed, it’s not you, it’s that the store is crowded and we’re trying to check in with all our customers. So be patient with us and try not to lose your sense of humor about total chaos.
– If you’d like to get your stack of  books wrapped, please be patient and plan other errands if you can, so you can come back and pick up your wrapped packages. Smaller stores need all their staff to help customers, N we don’t have dedicated wrappers, so that kind of flexibility is hugely valuable to us.
– If you know you’re in a hurry and know what books you’re looking for, try to call ahead and we’ll have your books ready and waiting for you.
– Just because you’ve been hearing about a certain “hot” book doesn’t mean your local store will automatically have it. Let’s just be honest, how many small independents can actually get their hands on The Autobiography of Mark Twain, when Amazon is out of stock on it?
– We’ve been giving our customers these yummy candies when they come to the counter. They’re from the Shelburne Country Store down the street from us, and they’re called Sugar Plums and they are a small dollop of heaven. It’s amazing how a small unexpected treat can really brighten a beleaguered shopper’s day.
– Lastly, Christmas should be about loving your friends and family. Gift-giving shouldn’t be so stressful that it’s not fun anymore. Let your friendly independent booksellers help put some of the joy back in shopping by hand-selecting books for everyone on your list.

I belong to the New England Children’s Bookselling Advisory Council and we’ve got a pretty active listserv. Last week the thrust of everyone’s emails was how to keep shopping local during the holiday season. I know that spending is a challenge for everyone during the holidays and customers are always looking for ways to save, and it’s no secret that a local independent bookstore cannot compete with Sam’s Club, Costco or Walmart on prices for certain books.

One bookseller, Ellen Richmond from Children’s Book Cellar, Waterville, Maine, had a customer say, rather loudly when she realized that the latest Wimpy Kid cost $13.95 (its list price),” I can get it at X for $6.99.” Well, yes you can, but what the customer didn’t realize was X doesn’t actually do anything for the community. So, Ellen struck back with a poster that graces her front door.  I couldn’t have said it better myself. Folks often forget just how much their local store (book or otherwise) does in their community, and a poster like this is a gentle reminder to all who enter just how entrenched the store is in their town. Every bookstore is fighting for book sales and the competition is fierce. Anything we can do to help remind folks that we’ll always give your dog a biscuit, donate to the Little League and bring authors to your schools can only help our cause.

So, keep it local and keep all the independents vital parts of your town.

As we are solidly in the heart of the holiday season, I wanted to take a moment to make my wish list for all independents for the coming year (in no random order().
– My first wish is for all indie bookstores to thrive, and not just at the holidays, but every day, when sales matter even more.
– I wish that publishers wouldn’t send boxes, or massive Tyvek bags, of galleys in the month of December. None of us has time to sort them, much less read them. These galleys would be much more appreciated at the beginning of year when business is slow.
– Along those lines, could publishers resist the urge to have new books come out after December 15th? Seriously, I doubt any bookstore really has the time to properly receive new releases when they’re getting five times as many boxes in every day just to keep up with restocking the store.
– I wish that customers would spend less time talking about how much they love their e-readers. I hear they’re great, but I don’t go to the Toyota dealership waxing rhapsodic about my Subaru. And I hope that the world takes a deep breath and remembers what an actual book smells like and feels like in their hands.
– I wish I had more time in the day to be a front-line bookseller.
– I’m hoping someone can explain the whole Google Books thing to me and how it works to sell Google e-books on my web site while Google sells them for less on Google.
– Secretly, I’m still hopeful that Baker and Taylor will go back to using boxes that aren’t super-glued together with such strength that my staffers actually bargain for who has to break them down. They’re great for team-building, but that’s about it.
– I hope that children’s books continue to be a bright spot in the publishing world.
– I sincerely hope that reading a child a book, an actual book, at bedtime will never be supplanted by a Kindle, Nook, iPad, or other device.
– I wish high school students had less homework and more time to read just for fun.
– I hope that all my customers who are fighting cancer have a better year and regain their health in 2011.
– And lastly, don’t forget that even though booksellers work around books all the time, we all miss getting a book as a present.
– Okay, last one really. Thanks to all of you who continue to support your local bookstore. You have no idea how much you mean to us.

Sometimes, the only handselling a book needs is its opening line. When I picked up the ARC for Franny Billingsley’s Chime (Dial, April 2011), the first lines popped out and zapped me: “I’ve confessed to everything and I’d like to be hanged. Now, if you please.” And the rest of the page is even better. That’s what I call a great opener.
For children’s literature aficionados, it’s hard to match the iconic first line of Charlotte’s Web: “‘Where’s Papa going with that ax?’ said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.”
I’m also a big fan of Frances Marie Hendry’s opening line to Quest for a Maid (a fabulous adventure novel for ages 10-14, in case you don’t know it): “When I was nine years old, I hid under a table and heard my sister kill a king.” (Nota bene: In a search for the cover image, I discovered that this unique gem of a book is OP. How can that be?! Probably because booksellers like me forgot to recommend it often enough. Argh.)
Avi’s provocative first line from The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle is well-known: “Not every thirteen-year-old girl is accused of murder, brought to trial, and found guilty.”
It’s not all murder and mayhem. Karen Cushman’s Catherine, Called Birdy begins, “I am bit by fleas and plagued by family.” A Drowned Maiden’s Hair by Laura Amy Schlitz starts thusly: “On the morning of the best day of her life, Maud Flynn was locked in the outhouse singing ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic.'”
How about M.T. Anderson’s hilarious beginning to The Game of Sunken Places: “The woods were silent, other than the screaming.” A better known Anderson blockbuster first line is Feed‘s “We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.” And another—he is a formidable formulator of first lines—comes from Whales on Stilts: “On Career Day Lily visited her dad’s work with him and discovered he worked for a mad scientist who wanted to rule the earth through destruction and desolation.”
Hints of disaster and intimations of unusual worlds are always intriguing. We can’t help wanting to know what comes next.
Which sent me to some nearby 2011 galleys to see what unusual or particularly provocative first lines might await us next year. It’s a silly way to judge a book, of course; plenty of books with quiet first lines are absolute treasures. But book lovers are drawn to first and last lines; we can’t help ourselves. So here are a few new promising starts. (I’m writing at home tonight, not at the store, so I don’t have a full range of galleys to choose from, just a recent box of Harper ARCs, plus a few from Random House and Egmont. I hope you fine readers will chime in with your own favorites in the comments section.)
LARK by Tracey Porter (HarperTeen, 6/11) — “First he hit her, then he stabbed her with a small knife, but Lark didn’t die from this. She died from the cold.”
(Okay, yes, very violent, but the title character dies in the second line? That’s literary chutzpah right there.)
DELIRIUM by Lauren Oliver (Harper, 2/11) — It has been sixty-four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty-three since the scientists perfected a cure.”
(A cure for love? Love as disease? Definitely got my attention.)
FINS ARE FOREVER by Tera Lynn Childs (HarperCollins/Tegen, 7/11) — “At the moment I am sole heir to the throne of Thalassinia, one of the most prosperous underwater kingdoms in the world.”
(Underwater kingdom? I’m there.)
THE SCHOOL FOR THE INSANELY GIFTED by Dan Elish (Harper, 7/11) — “Like most of the students at the Blatt School for the Insanely Gifted, Daphna Whispers had her share of quirks.”
(A lot of set-up in one funny opener.)
THE STORM BEFORE ATLANTA by Karen Schwabach (Random House, 12/10) — “Jeremy DeGroot was determined to die gloriously for his country.”
(Name a boy who wouldn’t be interested to read further.)
BUMPED by Megan McCafferty (Balzer+Bray, 5/11) — “I’m sixteen, pregnant, and the most important person on the planet.”
(Well, allrighty then.)
FALCON QUINN AND THE CRIMSON VAPOR by Jennifer Finney Boylan (Katherine Tegen, 5/11) — Hum this one out loud to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “California Girls”:  “Well the Sasquatch girls are hip, I love their fur all splotched with crud…”
(I will think of this line every time I hear the song now. I’m not sure this is a good thing, but it makes me laugh.)
HUMAN.4 by Mike A. Lancaster (Egmont, 3/11) — “When Danny Birnie told us that he had hypnotized his sister we all thought he was mad. Or lying. Or both.”
(You had me at “hypnotized his sister.” And “lying.”)
FAERIE WINTER by Janni Lee Simner (Random House, 4/11) — “The woman who would become my mother backed trembling away from the man who would save her life, and I did not know why.”
(Neither do I, but I want to.)
KINDRED by Tamar Stein (Knopf, 2/11) — “The first time I meet an angel, it is Raphael and I am eighteen.”
(Personal bias at work here, perhaps: I love the name Raphael, and the reference to the Old Testament archangel interests me.)
BLOOD MAGIC by Tessa Gratton (Random House, 4/11) — “It is impossible to know who you really are until you spend time alone in a cemetery.”
(Really? I immediately want to test out this theory — and find out why the narrator says it.)
YOU’LL LIKE IT HERE (EVERYBODY DOES) by Ruth White (Delacorte, 6/11) — “When I was in the third grade on the California coast, a crazy man came into my classroom and started waving a knife around.”
(Something about the juxtaposition of third grade and a crazy man in the classroom is jarring in a way that makes me instantly believe it. I want to know what happened and how that affected the narrator.)
THE END OF THE WORLD CLUB by J&P Voelkel (Egmont, 12/10) — “The twelve Lords of Death were bored.”
(Simple, succinct, unexpected; sounds like something Christopher Moore or Terry Pratchett might write. I’m in!)
***
Good, aren’t they? What are your favorite first lines, either from 2011 ARCs or from books already out? (Please identify the books for people who haven’t read them yet. Great springboard to a new read!)