In thinking about a post for Valentine’s Day, I thought a lot about who and what we booksellers love. We love good books. We love loyal customers. We love successful author events, extra discounts, delayed billing, and seemingly limitless access to free reading material. AND… we love, love, love our sales reps. From what I’ve gleaned in my conversations with other booksellers, almost all of us love almost all of them. I think these often unsung heroes of the book world deserve a little praise and a lot of love on Valentine’s Day (and every day), so I’m listing here the qualities that apply to the best of them and make them so valuable to the work of we booksellers AND (whether you know it or not) to the work of you publishers, authors, and illustrators too.

Sales reps are useful. For booksellers, your rep is often the only consistent human link you have to a publishing house. When you have a problem with an order, you call your rep. When you’re particularly interested in hosting a certain author, you call your rep. When you want to be sure your newsletter blurb can be pre-approved for co-op, you call your rep. And so on, and so on. If there’s a phrase I hear spoken more consistently than any others by our sales reps, it’s "I’ll see what I can do." And, in almost all cases, they get back to you with an answer, a solution, a name, a number, a something helpful. Amazing.

Sales reps are knowledgeable. They’re knowledgeable about their books, knowledgeable about our stores, knowledgeable about their companies’ policies, and knowledgeable about US, meaning "we booksellers," meaning "actual people." I don’t mean to suggest that the reps who call on me, specifically, all know my birth date, my grandparents’ names, and whether or not I’ve cut my hair since they last saw me (though many of them do). They know things instead that are considerably more useful and a testament to their abilities to both listen and intuit well: they know what I generally like, they know what I’m likely to buy, they know what our store generally sells, they know the other booksellers I admire, and they know the best ways to approach me. This may not seem like much, but it makes both their job and mine infinitely easier, and it makes our buying sessions incredibly smooth.

Sales reps are respectful. They don’t insult buyers’ intelligence by "selling" to us or by pushing us to purchase books we’re unlikely to sell to our customers. When I sit with a rep and we’re going through a catalog together, he or she will give me what extra "beyond the catalog" information they have about a title, answer my questions about it, express their honest opinions about it (if they’ve read it), or tell me the buzz it’s getting in-house, then accept my decision of "2" or "5" or "37." If they are genuinely concerned that I’m selling myself short on a title — if, for example, they think a book is going to get a LOT of media attention, they think there’s a particular market this book might fit that I haven’t considered — they might suggest that I take a chance on a title I was inclined to skip or recommend that I increase their order. But they do this only when they REALLY feel it’s in our store’s best interest, and they probably don’t do with more than a couple titles on any season’s list. Why? They respect my abilities, as a buyer, to purchase what I think my customers will want; and they respect that every store has a budget that (believe it or not) does ultimately have its limitations.

Sales reps are honest. They don’t walk the corporate "marketing" line and sound like catalog copy. In other words, they concede that some of the titles on their list are MUCH better than others. A sales rep who is good to me is a sales rep who… (brace yourselves) tells me which titles I can skip.

I know, I know! Many of you authors and publishers just gasped in horror, thinking "NOT MY SALES REPS!!" But it’s true. If your sales rep is worth their salt (which most of them are, at least in the case of those calling on our store) they will not waste a buyers’ time or money, filling their shelves with books that don’t fit their market. If I’m uncertain about a novel, because I’ve never read it, and a sales rep thinks it’s not going to appeal to the readers in our store’s community, they are 100% right in telling me to move on and spend my money elsewhere. By doing this they save my time, earn my trust, and increase the likelihood that I’ll then take their advice later and increase my order on a different title, or take a chance on something I wouldn’t have considered if I didn’t trust their judgment. No buyer CAN or SHOULD buy every book on a publisher’s list. Especially not with output increasing by substantial margins every year. A good sales rep, then, is one who will help you separate the wheat from the chaff. (And, let’s be honest: we all know that in any given season the book world publishes plenty of chaff.)

If you’re now panicking, imagining that your sales reps are now instructing all buyers in all stores to skip the same books, worry not. Refer to my remarks after "our sales reps are knowledgeable." The same book a rep tells me to skip might be a book they encourage another buyer to buy in bulk. Again, they know our stores, they know our sales histories, they adjust their recommendations accordingly.

Sales reps are readers. You’re probably thinking, "But they HAVE to be." They do have to read a large number of the books on their list, yes, but they don’t have to be "readers." Nevertheless, with very few exceptions, they are. And that’s what makes them passionate about what they’re selling and eager to pass that enthusiasm along to the rest of us. What we do with our customers while handselling, sales reps do with us in our buying sessions — they make us want to buy the best titles on their list, and much more convincingly than any publisher’s catalog ever could.

Sales reps are hard-working. And I mean physically, intellectually, and paper-worky. Some of our commission reps show up with (no exaggeration) four or five cases or crates or suitcases of book samples for us to go through. They haul these loads in and out of bookstores ALL OVER their region, sometimes to multiple stores in the same day, and haul them all out again after each appointment. They write up and submit paperwork or computer files to each of the 12 or more publishers they represent for each of the stores that they visit, either before or after they’ve been in their cars for hours at a stretch, driving from store to store, state to state, to talk about the exact same books they’ve just talked about at 18 other stores in their region. Despite the fatigue that must result from that toil, they almost always show up on time for their appointments and betray no fatigue with the fact that you’re the third buyer in a row to gripe to them about the cover of the lead title on their list, or complain that their publisher was perpetually out of your favorite title throughout the holiday season.

Sales reps are friends. With us, I mean. We build relationships with these people who slog through slush to bring us their kits and catalogs season after season. We sit across from or beside them, for several hours at a stretch in some cases, doing little else but talking about books. But it’s amazing how many other topics slip easily into that conversation, and how much you learn about one another after years of exchanges of this kind.

Sales reps are good listeners and worth listening to. It’s true that as a bookseller I see a lot, opine a lot, and often long for a way to give feedback, in some form, to the publishers of the books I see every day. So, I share observations and raise questions with my sales reps, with whom I know I can be candid. My sales reps move o
n
to other stores where other booksellers do exactly the same thing. The season progresses, the trend continues, and a sales rep becomes a valuable repository of ideas and opinions that could quite possibly help a publisher shape a marketing campaign, reinvent a failing book cover, and reverse a negative trend or two. In this way a sales rep who is valuable to booksellers is valuable to publishers too. And authors. And illustrators. And anyone trying to figure out how best to get good books into people’s hands.

Sales reps are loved. At least, they are at our store. And I hope most you booksellers reading this have found cause to love your sales reps too.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

In the past two weeks I’ve read four novels back to back that were each very different from one another, but each noteworthy for their lack of predictability. One of them was, of course, The Mysterious Benedict Society. The others are as follows:

Tunnels by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams
(Scholastic/Chicken House, Jan. 2008)

I’ve read a couple mixed reviews of this book of late, all of which surprised me considerably, as I couldn’t put this book down! What starts as the story of a boy whose strange archeologist father has hooked him on the habit of unearthing oddities, ends as a rollicking subterranean adventure in a world that’s both decidedly sinister and deliciously complex. The descriptions that bring the book’s figures and settings to life were complete enough to make even the most secondary characters step right off the page for me.

It’s been ages since a fantasy book sucked me in with as much speed and force as did this one, and perhaps even longer since I was so surprised by the unexpected twists a story has taken. As I compulsively turned the pages I couldn’t help thinking that there are very few kids in the world who wouldn’t be swept up by this unpredictable adventure, and its forthcoming installments! I am, however, miffed that if our customers embrace this book with the speed I think they will, we will undoutedly lose some sales to their purchasing its sequel overseas. Deeper goes on sale in the U.K. this May but won’t hit American bookstores until January 2009. That’s a long time for true fans (like me!) to wait.

The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd
(Random House/David Fickling Books, Feb. 2008)

It’s a challenge to write about this book without mentioning the traits it has in common with Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Both books are mysteries narrated by kids on the Autism spectrum. In The London Eye Mystery, said kid is Ted, a teenager with Asperger’s or, as he explains it, "a funny brain that runs on a different operating system from other people’s."

Trouble mushrooms in Ted’s life when his cousin Salim pays their family a visit then goes missing on a family outing to the London Eye. Ted and his sister Kat both saw Salim enter a capsule on the enormous wheel and watched it complete its rotation, but when the passengers disembark from Salim’s "pod," he is not among them. Ted and Kat’s race to figure out what happened to Salim makes for a pleasingly puzzling read that will indeed keep you guessing, as you watch Ted assemble the missing in his own intriguing ways.

While this story is by and large a light one (especially in comparison to Dowd’s previous novel A Swift Pure Cry), there are moments where it shows an emotional depth that belies its tone. These moments appear whenever Salim’s family is forced to confront the fact that Salim might not be coming home, and consider the terrible fates that might have befallen him. I couldn’t help connecting these little nods to mortality to the fact that Siobhan Dowd passed away just this past August. To quote from her web site: "Siobhan died on 21st August 2007 aged 47. She had been receiving treatment for advanced breast cancer for 3 years and, did not go gentle into that good night." Because I can’t decide which of her obituaries impressed or moved me more, the one in the Guardian or the one in the Independent, I say read both.

Cicada Summer by Andrea Beaty
(Harry N. Abrams/Amulet Books, May 2008)

Four things led me to move this book immediately to the top of my read-these-a.s.a.p. pile:
1.) I loved the cover.
2.) I’ve really been enjoying Andrea Beaty’s picture books (a new favorite is Doctor Ted, which is being published this April — see a sneak preview on Pascal LeMaitre’s web site).
3.) I could tell it was a short book — one I could read in under two hours, which is helpful for someone who is forever hoping to increase her BPM (Books Per Month).
4.) It’s about a girl who’s obsessed with Nancy Drew. Enough said.

The closest book I can think to compare this one to is Love, Ruby Lavender. Though Cicada Summer strikes a more serious tone than Deborah Wiles’ first novel, in both books a likeable tomboyish girl is too traumatized by the loss of someone close to her to open up about it to anyone in her small Southern town. In the both books this girl is nurtured by her relationship with an elderly woman. In both books this girl finds her closest friend in someone who seems an a very unlikely prospect. In this book, though, the unlikely prospect is a girl in some rather serious danger — the kind of danger that would benefit from an observant girl sleuth.

This book snuck up on me. I couldn’t *quite* decipher the mystery on these pages before it was finally brought together for me. And I wasn’t fully aware of the extent to which it had me in its clutches emotionally, until I hit a page that turned on the water works and found me reaching for the nearest box of tissues. I wound up reading Cicada Summer from cover to cover in one sitting, too drawn in by the its story and characters to be able to set them aside. Which is, come to think of it, what used to happen to me while reading Nancy Drew….

I have a confession to make. Until this past week, I had not read The Mysterious Benedict Society.

I know! I know!! Everyone read this book last year, EVERYONE loved this book, everyone’s been raving about this book, it was on every mock-Newbery list in the country, and my best friend’s husband (Kelly) said I HAD to read it a.s.a.p. because Trenton Lee Stewart’s wife is a friend of his from high school. Kelly, Everyone, I apologize: I just didn’t get to it last year. Just like I didn’t get to even a fraction of all the books I’d hoped to read. As happens every year.

Here’s what I will say in my defense: At least I didn’t lie about it. I did NOT claim to have read this book. Nope. I might have used evasive language a time or two or avoided contributing to conversations about it and in so doing "suggested" (perhaps even unintentionally!) that I’d read this book, but I never outright LIED about having read it. (At least not that I recall…).

Why would I even consider lying about such an insignificant thing? Because it’s exhausting to have to endure over and over again the shocked gasp that generally follows admissions of this sort. In their interviews with "Book Brahmins" one of Shelf Awareness‘s standard categories to fill in is: "Book You’ve Faked Reading" which I always love seeing and find completely reassuring. ("Whew! I’m not the only one!") It’s tiring to sheepishly recount the reasons that you still haven’t read this book or that book on the neverending list of "books everyone else has read and you know you ought to have read but didn’t and now feel needled by and therefore are less likely to read ever."

The good news is that The Mysterious Benedict Society did not fall so deep into that trap as to become irretrievable for me. I fished it out, I read the book, and by golly I did indeed LOVE it!! I loved it so much, in fact, that I went back and awarded it a Morris Medal, which is something I can do, because (of course) it’s my own awards list and I make the rules. I have since moved on to reading the ARC for The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey, which will be published in May, and challenging my friends to take the Personality Challenge on the official Mysterious Benedict Society website, so I can see how well we’d work as a team. (Apparently I’m most like Reynie.)

MANY of you recently confessed your propensity for or dislike of or indifference to the idea of peeking at a book’s ending: I think it’s now time to confess the books you’ve faked reading or outright lied about.

In order to establish that we have a trusting relationship here I will not admit publicly that I’ve never read anything by Ernest Hemingway or John Steinbeck. I don’t remember reading Anne of Green Gables, which leads me to believe that I never have. I’ve met Eoin Colfer but I haven’t read a single Artemis Fowl book. And I’ve read only one novel by Avi (The End of the Beginning, which I loved).

ARGH! Admit it: You just gasped at that last one, didn’t you?? As recompense you ought now to lay bare some of your own sins. Confess your deepest, darkest reading omissions and/or fakes right here, where you (unlike me!) have the option of doing so in complete anonymity. I promise I will not use my "connections" (thanks, Kelly) to send the Mysterious Benedict Society out to discover your real identity.

Suddenly, finally, I’m noticing a lot of wonderful new multicultural board books appearing on the market. Not that I will ever tire of hand-selling Baby Born by Anastasia Suen or "More, More, More," Said the Baby by Vera B. Williams, but it’s nice to adding so many new favorites to the mix!

Global Babies
by The Global Fund for Children (Charlesbridge, June 2007)

Our store is not the only one to embrace this board book and include it on our list of last year’s best. I’ve heard many other booksellers tout their love for this book, which is noteworthy for its simplicity and effectiveness. Each page shows a photograph of a baby in their native country, which is identified on the page, sporting their everyday clothes, doing their everyday baby things, and being loved for them. The complete text of the book reads as follows: "Wherever they live, / wherever they go, / whatever they wear, / whatever they feel, / babies everywhere / are beautiful, / special, / and loved." What baby anywhere doesn’t need to hear that message? And what better way to give a baby or toddler a taste of the wider world than to give them this book? (It’s certainly a lot easier than taking them on flights to Spain, Guatemala, Rwanda, Iraq, Greenland, Thailand, South Africa, Peru, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Fiji, Mali, India, and Malawi.)

Baby! Baby!
by Vicky Ceelen (Random House, January 2008)

Wordless entertainment is what this book contains. Each spread shows a photo of a baby on one side, an animal sporting a similar posture or facial expression on the other. A solid colored border around each page makes the photos pop. You can’t help but laugh at thes entertaining similarities here between baby and beast.

There are a couple of online galleries that show some of Vicky’s photographic comparisons. The images of giraffe + baby and bunny rabbit + baby in gallery one appear in this book. So do the gorilla + baby in gallery three, and the frog + baby in gallery four. To see the others, you’ll just have to "read" this wordless book!

Haiku Baby
by Betsy E. Snyder (Random House, May 2008)

While this new board book doesn’t feature images of babies like the others, I love that it brings the Japanese art of haiku down to an infant level. Bright, colorful collage illustrations pay homage on nature, on spreads that each feature a different 17-syllable poem. The titles of said poems are written in both English and Japanese. Here’s one, just to give you a taste:

LEAF
yoo-hoo, peekaboo!
wind plays tag with autumn leaf —
catch me if you can!

Circle + Square / Circulo + Cuadro by Jill Hartley (Groundwood Books, April 2008)

Colors + Flavors / Colores + Sabores by Jill Hartley (Groundwood Books, April 2008)

Red + Green / Rojo + Verde by Jill Hartley (Groundwood Books, April 2008)

Stripes + Arrows / Rayas + Flechas by Jill Hartley (Groundwood Books, April 2008)

These wordless board books feature some of the brightest, most interesting photos I’ve seen on the cardboard page. Beautiful, bold shots of objects, signs, children, and scenery from Hartley’s native Mexico fill their pages, making each one a visual feast. Fantastico! Groundwood Books’ Web site adds this note to the info. about each of Hartley’s books: "Coming Soon: A new Board Books setion of our web site with a glossary of the book’s objects in English and Spanish!" This will be especially useful to readers baffled by some of the things they’re seeing. (Just think — that must be how babies feel all the time!)

One of my favorite light, quirky reads to recommend to adults is Amy Krause Rosenthal’s delightful Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. Written in encyclopedia format, it gives short explanations for events or people or things that Amy has lived, observed, opined — you name it. And FUNNY! Oh, is it ever funny! I was reading it on an airplane and laughing so loudly that multiple people asked me about it and wrote down the title. If I’d had extra copies with me I’m confident I could have sold them on the spot.

One of my favorite sections of the book is "Exhibit A" under the entry for "Childhood Memories": "Things My Friends Were Confused By As Children." Here are a few of them:

I couldn’t understand the difference between a sound track in a movie, which the actors supposedly could not hear, and if there was a radio on in the movie, which the actors could hear. Music would be playing and I’d say to my mom, "Okay, can they hear that? Okay, now can they hear that?"

Whenever I saw those tiny planes that leave streaks of white in the sky, I thought that it was someone’s job to do that. And that’s what I wanted to do when I grew up; I thought I would revolutionize the field by drawing more creative things in the sky than just straight lines.

Recently I stumbled across a website that is CHOCK FULL of gems like the ones Amy shares in her book. It’s IUsedtoBelieve.com ("the childhood beliefs site"), and it’s pretty much a storage place for childhood stupidity (or "innocence" if you want to be nice about it). I was particularly taken with the section on ice cream trucks — I suppose because I never realized there was so much to be confused about when it came to these particular vehicles, and because I wasn’t giving parents enough cleverness credit. To whit:

I thought the music would play faster or slower depending the speed of the ice cream truck. That’s why the music stopped when the truck stopped.

My mum used to tell me that when the ice cream van came around it played the music to tell children that it was bed time. The van used to go past my house at noon.

I used to belive my Dad when he told me that if the ice-cream van was playing a tune, it meant that it was empty. When I asked about why people were queueing up, he would reply "well, they’re going to be very disappointed". I didn’t get an ice-cream for years.

I thought it would be especially appropriate to share with you some of the things people say they believed about books and/or reading:

I used to think that "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea" was a story about an awful lot of sports being played under the sea, since there were 20,000 leagues there, in the story.

I thought, in kindergarden, in order to read a book you had to read the page then turn it around and wave it back and forth. Little did I know the teacher was just showing us the pictures and it was not required if you were reading to yourself.

When I was little I used to believe that cursive was read in a British accent and print was read in an American accent. I have no idea where this one came from.

My parents had a lot of self-help, how-to, historical, and factual books when I was a kid. I used to think that authors didn’t write stories for adults, and that when I grew up, I’d have to read boring stuff about gardening and wars.

When i was little i overheard my older cousin say that he had to write a letter for english. Well being 4 at the time i thought that he was inventing a letter (as in a letter of the alphabet). i couldnt wait till i was in high school and got to invent my own letter. its name was going to be anzy and look like a spiral.

What about you? If you’ve got any entertaining memories of childhood confusions, do tell!

Last Thursday was a big day for Wellesley Booksmith. First, Linda Buckley-Archer made a brief stop at our store to sign stock and charm our socks off. Authors don’t get much nicer than this one! I thoroughly enjoyed the time Linda and I spent chatting, while she graciously signed copy after copy of her Gideon books for us.

Linda wrote about her visit to our store on her trip blog, which is apparently receiving 6,000 hits a day! Yowza! You know your books are popular when approximately 6,000 people are following your daily affairs.

Below Linda talks with Kristine Van Amsterdam and two of her daughters, Juliana (in the stripes) and Olivia (in orange). Missing from this photo is the third Van Amsterdam daughter, Katrina — my "teenage sidekick" and occasional guest reviewer. The Van Amsterdam family are HUGE Linda Buckley-Archer fans and have given her books away to almost everyone they know. I can’t imagine a higher compliment!

Less than an hour after Linda left the store, a crowd began assembling in our store’s Used Book Cellar, eagerly anticipating the start of our event with Jeff Kinney — the first stop on his Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules tour. When people began showing up at 5pm for a 6pm event, I knew we had reason to be worried….

As this event had garnered considerably more pre-event publicity than almost all of our previous events, I’d been figuring all week that we would probably overfill our events space, guessing that we might attract a crowd of about 150 people. As the Wellesley Free Library was unavailable the night of our event and we couldn’t move it to a school on late notice, or hope to notify people if we *did* we had to make do with what presentation space we had.

To do this we cleared all mobile bookcases out of our Used Book Cellar and set out just one row of chairs, along the back wall of the room The rest of the space was left open, so that we could seat kids on the floor and pack them as close together as seemed reasonable. I used masking tape to mark off an aisle through which Jeff could enter, exit, and "work the crowd" then stuck felt cheese to the floor in the aisle. Anyone who sat in the aisle would therefore be in danger of getting the cheese touch!! (If you’ve read Jeff’s books this will make sense to you.)

All of these preparations, though, plus seven years of events experience didn’t prepare me for the crowd we got: somewhere between 250 and 300 Jeff Kinney fans mobbed the store!! UNBELIEVABLE!

The down side of this was that not everyone got to see Jeff’s presentation — there was simply NO way we could accommodate everyone in our basement space, and having him make his presenation upstairs on the sales floor would have possibly allowed more people to hear him but even fewer would have been able to see and Jeff himself would most likely have gone hoarse. We eventually (even before the clock struck 6!) had no choice but to cut off the flow of families entering the basement. We even asked if there were adults in the room who’d give up their seats to accommodate disappointed kids. Anyone who didn’t make it into the basement for the presentation had to settle for getting some Kinney face time in the signing line. We all felt terrible about this, but what else could we do?

I was trapped in the front corner of the room during Jeff’s presentation, so my photo capabilities were SORELY limited, but I did snap a shot or two, which I’ll post here so you can see what the basement crowd scene was like. As if the angle isn’t bad enough, I didn’t have a chance to ask for photo permissions from the entire crowd so I’ve blurred these pictures quite a bit. Still, you should be able to pick up on the event "feeling" from this!

In the back right-hand corner of the room are the stairs leading up to the main sales floor. Notice that people are crowded into the stairwell too! (But, YES, there’s easy access to a fire exit on the basement level, so there was no cause for worry.)

The toughest crunch of the evening was when this sea of people left the basement to proceed upstairs for the signing line. It was slow going at first, but eventually we got everyone upstairs and lined up in order of the numbered tickets we’d handed them on the way in. I stood up on the counter at our back register to direct traffic, and the view from there, looking toward the front of our store, was like this:

 Unfortunately I didn’t turn around and a take shot of the back of our store (I had my mind on more important things!), but the back was where Jeff sat to sign books, looking very much like this throughout the evening:

We offered to get books personalized for families who couldn’t hack the wait and many took us up on the offer, thinning out the crowd somewhat, which was helpful. Those who stuck with it, though, seemed to be relatively pleased with the speed at which things were moving. Most of them spent their waiting time in EXACTLY the same fashion as Elizabeth Collins, Max Collins, and Dominic Giugliano, shown in the photo below:

All in all things went INCREDIBLY well, considering that no one knew we’d be quite this overrun for an author who has so far published just two books! Jeff was funny and gracious and sincerely happy to meet every one of his budding young fans, who asked him some surprisingly astute questions and shared some very entertaining observations. Oddly enough, the character they seem to find funniest in his books is MANNY!! During Jeff’s Q&A several cheered for the idea that he should do a book starring Manny. Jeff responded that he wasn’t sure it would work very well to write a novel starring a character with a one-word vocabulary. Ladies and gentlemen, the gauntlet has been thrown!

It’s great to see two people as down-to-earth and good-natured as Linda Buckley-Archer and Jeff Kinney finding themselves at the center of so much attention and seeing them turn so many kids on to books! Abrams Books has already sold through the entire first print run of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules which currently tops the New York Times Bestseller List in the Chapter Books category. In the number two slot sits Diary of Wimpy Kid, which has been on the list for 41 weeks. Amazing to think of the number of kids who’ve discovered it in that time. In comparison it makes our Kinney crowd look tiny!

(If you missed it, be sure to listen the interview with Jeff that aired on N
PR
Saturday, Feb. 2nd.)

When I wrote my handselling post of 1/9/08 I hoped to make the point that even a small independent bookstore can make a solid impact in the sales of a book, just by practicing the art of handselling. The trouble was, the only examples I gave you came from one bookstore — the one I work for.

Not wanting you to think that sales phenomena like the ones I posted about are unique to our store, I asked other independent bookstores to send me examples of their ’07 handselling successes, so that you can see for yourself what independent booksellers are doing for books throughout the country. (And throughout the world, for that matter.)

First, though, I want to share a few statistics that bookseller Karl Pohrt (owner of Shaman Drum Bookshop in Ann Arbor, Mich.) included in a speech he delivered at this year’s Beijing Book Festival:

We need to also carefully consider how the independent sector functions within the various retail channels that sell the top 500 titles each week. Of the retail channels that sell the first 150 titles on the list, it turns out that we underperforms in terms of its market share. Independent bookstores account for less than 9% or 10% of the sales of the most popular titles on the list.

When we do our job properly, independent booksellers act as an early warning system for publishers. We help publishers launch books. It should also be noted that the 150 to 500 range of titles is where publishers are making money, because they haven’t made huge investments that they have to recuperate in contracts with best-selling authors and large ad campaigns. So we also augment sales from the top 150 to 300 titles. 

Got that? Good. Now on with the show.

From Susan D. Mercier of Edgartown Books in Edgartown, Mass.:

Greetings from the island of Martha’s Vineyard. I would love to share our numbers and story from Whistling in the Dark by Leslie Kagen (Penguin). My fantastic sales rep Peter Giannone had sent me a copy of this book and EVERYONE on our staff loved it. We put it in the Staff Pick section and it took off this summer! We sold well over 200 copies of the book in July and August of 2007. Somehow the author heard of our love for the book and sent us a delicious tin of chocolate chip cookies this past September!!

From Vicky Uminowicz of Titcomb’s Bookshop in Sandwich, Mass.:

We’ve been handselling an adult book called Flame Keepers by Ned Handy for several years now. It’s the true and very moving story of the man who dug the tunnel at Stalag 17 during WWII. The author lives part of the year in our town. It’s an adult book, but we often recommend it for older teens. We talked about it with our high school librarian, Deb O’Brien, and she decided it would be an excellent book for the entire high school to read. Mr. Handy spoke at the high school and every class did something related to the book, including art, phys. ed, history and math (how many square feet of dirt was removed for the tunnel?). Our town-wide reading committee held a program on Veteran’s Day with a panel discussion including Mr. Handy. The result was an enormous feeling of community and good will. I spoke with a 5th grader from a town 20 miles away who had read the book and couldn’t wait to meet the author. We have now sold 164 copies of the hardcover and 788 of the paperback.

Another example: There is a wonderful picture book called Riptide by Frances Ward Weller. It’s based on the true story of a dog who saved someone’s life on Cape Cod. We only have to share a bit of the storyline and show customers a few of the beautiful illustrations by Robert J. Blake and it’s sold! We’ve sold 229 copies so far.

From Jill Moore of Square Books, Jr. in Oxford, Miss.:

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart was so good when I first read it that I talked my 12 to 15 year-old SBJ Book Society into reading it, even though it was a youngish title for them. The kids loved it! Soon after the SBJ Book Society teens pronounced their love for the book, the 8 to 11 year-olds were after it. So, being precocious, the 8 to 11 year-olds championed the title with gusto. As was the case with The Sisters Grimm (which I would like to think my handselling helped its success), The Mysterious Benedict Society became a must have for libraries, a read aloud to young children, a book choice for middle schoolers, teenagers and adults. The author contacted me shortly after the book’s release because he had heard through the grapevine that both my book clubs had chosen the title. If you haven’t yet read The Mysterious Benedict Society, get a move on. I have sold 130 copies.

Hildegarde and the Great Green Shirt Factory is a colorful and fun picture book written and illustrated by Ravay Snow…. In an age of "Project Runway" and "America’s Next Top Model," Hildegarde is a picture book with contemporary flair that celebrates personal expression. Loaded with good lessons about being yourself, taking a stand and accepting a change, [it] is now one of my favorite books, for girls and boys of all ages and adults too. I am proud to say that we sold 89 copies. Of course, we were graced by Ravay Snow’s delightful presence at our Saturday storytime.

Last fall I had the pleasure of stumbling across a galley of Jaguar Stones by J&P Voelkel, the first installment in the Middleworld trilogy. With great delight I realized that the book filled that empty space in my heart I once reserved for pirates and treasure…. I foresaw selling huge stacks of the books to precocious middle schoolers and adventurous preteens. However, when I went to order the book I found it was scarcely available through normal channels. In fact, as standard practice, it was not a book I could afford to sell. But I loved this book, like one loves a stray puppy or kitten. I loved it so much I contacted the publisher, Smith & Kraus, and then finally the authors to secure the delivery of 10 copies to Square Books, Jr. I was unsure I could convince others of the book’s greatness. Sometimes if you like a book too much, people don’t believe you, they think you are trying to trick them…. I am glad to report I have sold 18 copies of this title. There are mainstream titles that never do this well. Also, the author has scheduled a visit to Oxford to do a signing and presentation at Square Books, Jr. and the schools. I intend to sell many more, and have already had kids report back about how much they love the book and how it has spurred interest in archeology and Latin America!

From Becky Anderson of Anderson’s Bookshops in Naperville, Ill. and Downers Grove, Ill.:

This list doesn’t include the obvious bestsellers that are made before they hit the shelf, but those favs that staff goes to again and again in our two stores. Several of these titles were also big hits at our bookfair company but I didn’t add those numbers to these.

Mysterious Benedict Society: 477 copies
Football Genius: 229
Kimchi and Calamari: 54
The Seems: 189
That Girl Lucy Moon: 144

Fi
rst Light: 67
True Meaning of Smekday: 229
Leepike Ridge: 63
Thing About Georgie: 89
Miss Spitfire: 80
How to Steal a Dog: 79
Cracker: 140
Aurora County All Stars: 74
Gallop: 805 —this was such a blast just demonstrating — not talking to customers about!

From Kari Patch of Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass.:

Last year I fell in love with Oliver Jeffers. Seriously. Lost and Found (when we could keep it in stock) sold really well. When I saw the f&g for the Incredible Book Eating Boy, I loved it. One staff recommendation later, we’ve sold 68 copies of Book Eating Boy. I’m guessing that’s about 60 more than we might have sold otherwise. (We’re also at 80+ copies of Lost and Found sold. For someone that’s not Jon Muth that’s amazing for us.)

Our YA hit of the year (aside from Harry and Percy and Hugo) was Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr. We got 2 ARCs of this last spring and both Liz and I read and loved it. Liz got a staff recommend in first. With the recommendation on the staff picks wall and some steady handselling, we’ve sold 48 copies thus far. Normally, we’re amazed at 5-10 copies of a teen book selling in hardcover. I’m guessing we’ll sell about 60 before Wicked Lovely is out in pb.

From Janet Bibeau of Storybook Cove in Hanover, Mass.:

The book we sold the most was The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies: 70 copies. 27 copies were sold at the SCBWI conference which are to her credit. About 19 were presigning sales and sales on the day of the signing, but 24, a huge amount for Storybook Cove, were sold by handselling. This is a great book for the kid reading above grade level (identifies with the sister), for the struggling student or those that live in the shadow of siblings (identifies with the brother), for those who like math more than reading, for those who don’t like math but like reading!

From Ellen Mager of Booktenders’ Secret Garden in Doylestown, Pa.:

I depend on the author/illustrator visits in my store and putting them in schools for at least 50% of my sales, but handselling is most of the rest.

Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick: 240 (150 = Involved in signing: 40 to a school he visited, 23 because I hand sold it to a teacher and she read 1 chapter with them and the children bought them and I took them to the school to be signed for them!) 90 books sold between 3/5/07 and 12/31/07 (35 in October!) 

The World’s Greatest Elephant by Ted Lewin: (85 in 2006 with a signing) 60 COPIES SOLD IN 2007! I LOVE book talking this book and watching the listeners’ facial reactions! 

Jungle Bullies by Steven Kroll: 56 copies sold — 31 sold due to teacher night presentation/signing, 25 others sold ONLY "bully" book where the bullies behavior is positively changed by those he’s wronged.

Patches Lost and Found by Steven Kroll hand sold to teachers as a "patterning" book for writing personal experiences… 38 sold — 17 @ Teacher Night

Giant Hug by Valeri Gobachev (Our Valentine’s choice every year!) 30 sold due to V. Day signing. 16 others hand sold during the rest of the year.

Main Street # 1: Welcome to Camden Falls by Ann M. Martin: sold 40 at a school signing and hand sold 30 in the last 6 months of the year, including 5 for a neighborhood book club.

Living Color by Steve Jenkins: hand sold 14 this fall! (His books are the way science should be taught in elementary schools!)

Henry’s Freedom Box by Ellen Levine and Kadir Nelson: hand sold 12 ! (Other than Jerry Pinkney, African American books are a hard sell in this area so that number is great!)

The Wall by Peter Sis: hand sold 10 this Fall
Igraine by Cornelia Funke: hand sold 15
Artist to Artist: 10 copies 
Where in the Wild: 11 copies 
Lissy’s Friends by Grace Lin: 10 copies 
Rabbit’s Gift by George Shannon and Laura Drozek: 11 copies 
Five Little Gefiltes: 12 copies
The Geronimo Stilton series: 135 copies over 33 titles
Magyk by Angie Sage: 16 in 2006 and 14 in 2007

From Maureen Palacios at Once Upon a Time in Montrose, Calif.:

Besides children’s titles, we carry a smattering of very select adult titles (book club titles mainly) among them a little-known second book authored by a friend of a friend. Although not marketed or written as a children’s book, Maria Amparo Escandon’s adult book Gonzalez and Daughter Trucking Company was our store’s favorite hand sell for 2006 and 2007! Two of our smart high school female employees absolutely adored the book, started recommending it to similar minded mature YAs and adults and then started a "Tough Girls Club" based on the story’s female protagonist’s decision to start a book club while being incarcerated in a Mexican women’s prison.

Anyway, when Ms. Escandon visited our store for a book signing, the store was jam packed. Mind you, this was in 2006. OK, so along the way, many other folks got interested in the book and in 2007, after reading many titles for consideration (including more well known books such as Water for Elephants), the city one mile down the road from our store La Canada One City/One Book committee choose Gonzalez & Daughter Trucking Company for their 2007 book for both adults and high schoolers based, in part, on our store’s enthusiasm for the book, its quirky characters and ability to provoke discussion. The city held successful and well-attended One City/One Book events in October of last year including an author appearance.

We hand sold close to 100 copies of the book in 2007 even though the book has been out for a number of years and this is mostly a children’s store. In 2006, we sold about 380 copies. When one person on the staff gets excited about a title, spreads the word to others, but most importantly, has other staffers read and agree this book is a great title for our demographic, it’s almost like magic, how customers respond to enthusiasm and excitement about a little-known "gem."

From Elizabeth Bluemle of The Flying Pig Bookstore in Charlotte, Vt.:

After Doug Cochrane made me read the beautiful Samsara Dog (Kane/Miller) at his booth at NEIBA, and it reduced me to actual sobs (but the good kind), we stocked it at the store and recommended it via the newsletter and handselling. Customers handsold it to other customers. People bought twos and threes. We’ve sold 59 copies so far, and it’s still going strong. Had it not been for a persistent sales rep ("You MUST read this RIGHT NOW"), we might not have discovered our sleeper hit of the season.

From Pat Byrne of Bookends in Winchester, Mass.:

101 Things You Gotta Do Before You’re 12 by Joanne O’sullivan: 58 copies
101 Places You Gotta See Before You’re 12 by Joanne O’Sullivan: 65 copies

We all think these books are great and so much fun to suggest. They’re not pretentious and are a great aid for parents who are l
ooking for things to do with their kids during the holidays and vacations. Some right in their own back yards!

From Carol Chittenden of Eight Cousins in Falmouth, Mass.:

Here are the titles and numbers we felt worked well this past year because we loved them and recommended them face to face with our customers. They also became our Picks of the Year during the holiday season, when we recommend them in newsletters, online, in displays, AND in person.

49 copies of A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban.

34 copies of Do Unto Otters by Laurie Keller, and 32 copies of The Golden Rule by Ilene Cooper, illus Gabi Swiatkowska: we displayed them together, since their theme is the same.

68 copies of Global Babies by the Global Fund for Children.

68 copies of Little Rat Makes Music by Monika Bang Campbell, illus. by Molly Bang. We have a local hook on this one, but anybody who reads it and looks at the illustrations will see that it applies to any child who’s frustrated at not becoming an instant success.

12 copies of Maybelle in the Soup by Kate Speck, in spite of an awful cover and much doubt on the part of reps that we could sell a book about a cockroach. But Maybelle’s not just any cockroach!

9 copies of What’s Eating You? by Nicola Davies, illus Neal Layton. Again, the reps were doubtful we could move even a single copy of a book about parasites. I’d rather sell information about parasites than stories about flatulence, personally.

43 copies of No Talking by Andrew Clements. We always love and can sell his books, but this one was so good it far outranked his other recent hardcovers.

25 copies of A Second Is a Hiccup by Hazel Hutchins, illus. by Kady McDonald Denton. I was surprised, because it’s so brief — but not surprised, because it’s a subject kids think about endlessly.

33 copies of Stick by Steve Breen. Loved it, and the text is so brief, customers recognized that a kid could follow it solo after just one or two readings with an adult.

38 copies of I’m the Biggest Thing in the Ocean by Kevin Sherry. One of the best this side of calamari.

22 copies of Where in the Wild? Camouflaged Creatures Concealed…and Revealed by David Schwartz, with photos by Dwight Kuhn. It was easy to show customers why this would work for children they didn’t know very well, because it offers both poetry, science, and a visual tickle.

There are other titles we sold more of, but these were the ones where we felt our own enthusiasm made a real difference. There were some others whose covers made it impossible to sell, no matter how we enthused, though.

From Sandy Scott of The Galaxy Bookshop in Hardwick, Vt.:

12 copies of Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy (We rarely sell hardcover young adult books, but between my own and my co-worker Kate’s praise, we had to keep re-ordering this one!)

From Kenny Brechner of Devaney Doak & Garrett Booksellers in Farmington, Me.:

In mid-November I was one title short for our holiday gift guide, namely I lacked a 13-up title I could handsell with abandon. Something that didn’t help morale was that two books which would have been absolutely perfect, Runemarks by Joanna Harris, and Tunnels by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams, were set for release on January 8th, a cruel proximity. While I was stewing about that fact Judith Rosen of PW called to chat about the wisdom of major releases made just after the Christmas season. I lamented to her that I really wished I had one of those two titles in hand, and that no greater amount of handselling would ever occur than the two weeks before Christmas. On December 8th one of our staff opened a Scholastic box and yelled out that, like a basket of foundlings left on the doorstep, a few copies of Tunnels were in it. I hadn’t pre-ordered it in force, as it wasn’t expected till January. After making sure that Tunnels had in fact been deliberately shipped early, I immediately ordered 50 more copies. We sold the last one at 4:00 on Christmas Eve. The moral is, more December 8th and less January 8th. What is finer than having a book in hand in mid-December that you know gift recipients will both love and be unfamiliar with?

From Shirley Mullin of Kids Ink Children’s Bookstore in Indianapolis, Ind. [the store that launched my — Alison’s — career in bookselling!]

So, I know you said books but we had outstanding sales of Bananagrams. It is the best toy to sell with books–sort of a simple Scrabble and with great packaging. Anyway, I played it at Thanksgiving with the amazing grandchildren who LOVED it and told the staff, and between Thanksgiving and Christmas we sold 190, mostly as add-on impulse items. We ultimately ran out a few days before Christmas and just yesterday got more and sold three on a slow day!

And one more thing: Illustrator Katherine Tillotson wrote to me to sing the praises of a program at Hicklebee’s in San Jose, Calif., called "Worth the Candle." In August Publishers Weekly featured an article on the program that is more than worth reading. Talk about a great way to handsell books… I think this program is worth several VATS of wax. As are all the booksellers who shared their numbers with me for this post! (Thanks, everyone!)

This seems to be my week of finding inspiration from alums of Wellesley Booksmith. On Monday I linked to a post written by our fleet-footed former bookseller Sarah Nixon. Today I want to point out a paragraph written by yet another uber-fabulous former colleague, Jill Saginario, whose talents now grace the children’s section of Powell’s Books (lucky ducks!). Jill wrote this paragraph for the most recent PowellsBooks.kids newsletter, which arrived in my inbox (and maybe yours?) last week:

Jill here. Sadly, 2007 has come and gone, but its passing has imbued a sense of hope for 2008. Personally, I’m thrilled at some of the recent trends in young adult literature, and I want to take this moment to cheer on those publishers that have taken risks and broken the mold. I’ve been seeing a lot of great, dynamic male characters: Sid Hite’s fantastically written novel I’m Exploding Now perfectly captures the deadpan humor of a typical ennui-filled sixteen-year-old. Hero by Perry Moore delivers the first gay superhero in a YA action-adventure. Most notably, however, is character James Sveck in Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron. We on the kids’ team unanimously love James Sveck, and I adore the way the author has constructed such a strong, relatable coming-of-age story with a gay character, whose gayness is almost incidental; it’s so matter-of-fact.

What risk-taking and mold-breaking did you observe in last year’s novels? Fallen in love with any great, dynamic characters of late? I’m with Jill — let’s take a moment to reflect on last year’s finest literary leaps and most memorable peeps.

I’ll start: Margaret McMullan’s beautiful novel When I Crossed No-Bob was bold in its honest exploration the emotional depression that choked the American South during the Reconstruction era. I can’t say that I’ve seen many books about this time period in American history — at least not ones narrated by kids whose parents are racist redneck scumbags. I would never have guessed that combination could yield a novel as beautiful as this one, but McMullan’s expert prose made it happen.

Now it’s your turn. Sing some of last year’s praises while this year is still young.

Today happens to be my 32nd birthday. If you equate years to pages, this means my life has just reached the length of your average picture book! Yippee!!

This entertaining little realization has had me thinking about the illustrated books that I loved as a child — the ones that might’ve unwittingly played a hand in making me the person I am today. As I don’t know who’d have the time to read my musings on 32 illustrated books I loved as a child, I cut the number in half. What follows is a list of 16 books I read so often as a child that they’re still somehow a part of me today. For the most part I’ve stayed away from including the same books that would appear on the childhood favorites list of almost everyone in my generation (Goodnight Moon, Pat the Bunny, Make Way for Ducklings, The Snowy Day, etc.), but there are some popular choices in here that I couldn’t help including.

PICTURE BOOKS I LOVED

A Hole Is to Dig by Ruth Krauss, illustrated by Maurice Sendak
My grandmother’s first cousin, Bob White, was a sales rep for HarperCollins, back in its "Harper and Row" days. One of my favorite, favorite relatives, Bob (and his just-as-wonderful wife Peg!) always saw to it that my home library included some of the best children’s book gems, and this was one of them. A staple of our bedtime read-alouds, my favorite page was the one that explains, "Mud is to jump in and slide in and yell doodleedoodleedoo." Now, though, I’m also very partial to "A book is to look at," and "Rugs are so dogs have napkins."

Time to Get Out of the Bath, Shirley by John Burningham
This book and its companion, Come Away from the Water, Shirley, were two of my absolute favorites. My own childhood copies are falling apart at the seams because I read them and re-read them so many times, marveling at the fact that Shirley could be one place in body while simultaneously somewhere else in her mind. I experienced this magical dualism every day as a kid but was fascinated to see it represented in pictures. And I was entertained by the endless nagging of Shirley’s mum.

Bill and Pete by Tomie dePaola
Every time I buy a new toothbrush I think of this book. Seriously. Embedded deep in my subconscious is the image of William Everett (a.k.a. Bill), a crocodile standing in the store with his mother, eyeing all the birds lined up on the store display, looking for the right one to pick at his teeth. He picks Pete, a plover. My own toothbrush purchases have never been half so memorable as Bill’s.

The Giant Jam Sandwich by John Vernon Lord, with verses by Janet Burroway
A town is besieged with wasps and comes up with the ultimate way to catch them — an enormous sandwich. The villagers make a huge open-faced jam sandwich, the wasps fly into the jam and get stuck fast, helicopters circling above drop another slice of bread onto the jam, and birds carry away the sandwich and savor the feast. Great fun! (But wow do those illustrations look "retro" to me now!)

Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears: A West African Tale retold by Verna Aardema, illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon
We didn’t own this book, but I checked it out of the library. Again. And again. And again. I think it scared me a little, which was part of its appeal. Even now I get a nervous little shiver when I think of it — amazing how a book can still affect the same way, years and years after you first read it.

George and Martha by James Marshall
I mean, really — when it comes to friendship stories, does it get any better than the George and Martha books? The older you are, the funnier they get — and the more you see your own relationships in them, too. I will never, ever fall out of love with these stories, and they’ll never stop making me laugh.

Liza Lou and the Yeller Belly Swamp by Mercer Mayer
I loved lots of Mercer Mayer books as a kid, but I think this one was my favorite. My mom’s from Tennessee, so the Southern flavor of this book felt very familiar to me, and the fact that the main character is African-American did too. My early schooling years were spent in inner-city schools where I was part of the mixed masses. I was, in fact, the only white kid in my kindergarten class and didn’t know that anyone else had it any different. Black/white/whatever color the protagonists, a story was a story to me. As it still is.

Father Christmas by Raymond Briggs
Why do kids love this book? Because Father Christmas is so cranky, and because you get to see him sitting on the toilet. Oh, the power of the naked bum! It worked wonders for David Shannon’s career too, you know. It’s the naked bum page of No, David! that sends kids into uncontrollable fits of giggles. You adults who were once fans of Father Christmas or The Snowman or the more recent Ug, Boy Genius of the Stone Age ought to now do yourselves the favor of reading Ethel and Ernest. It’s a graphic novel so beautiful it’ll move you to tears.

The Monster at the End of This Book, Starring Lovable, Furry Old Grover by Jon Stone, illustrated by Michael Smollin
This is one of the few TV-inspired books that I can recall really loving as a child, as I did my Sesame Street records (in particular an album called "In Harmony," which I still think is great). This book cracked me up. I also loved another Grover book, Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum.

The ChildCraft "How and Why" Library published by World Book (mine were circa 1980)
I loved this set of books and pored over all the illustrations and stories and information in each of them. My favorite, though, was Make and Do, which apparently is the favorite of lots of others like me, who grew up to be artsy-craftsy types.

Eight Little Indians by Josephine Lovell (pub. by Platt & Munk, 1936)
I have no idea how many inaccuracies there were in these stories about Native American children from eight different tribes, but I do know that this book enthralled my mother as a child and had the same effect on me. Recently my mom loaned our copy to a neighbor girl who fell just as in love with it as we each did. I wound up having to go online and purchase a copy for her, just so that she wouldn’t be heartbroken when we took ours back!

Where Did I Come From?
by Peter Mayle, illustrated by Arthur Robins
Hey, you’ve got to learn the facts of life somehow, and this book and What’s Happening to Me? were the ones my parents used to broach those discussions in our house. I can’t say I *loved* these books, because (frankly) the very thought of what was on those pages pretty well grossed me out as a child. But I did find them informative and grossly fascinating, as did the person who wrote a very entertaining article for the San Francisco Bay Guardian in 2004, prompted by her memories of reading this book.

ILLUSTRATED POETRY BOOKS I LOVED

I’m Nobody, Who Are You? Poems of Emily Dickinson for Young People by Emily Dickinson, illustrated by Rex Schneider (pub. by Stemmer House, 1978)
I absolutely, positively LOVED this book as a child, and I think it’s precisely because I didn’t really understand most of the poems in it. I found them fascinating but odd, baffling but beautiful. (Probably not unlike how some adults feel about poetry in general, poor souls.) My favorite poem in the book was the title poem, "I’m nobody, Who are you?" for which I can still recall Rex Schneider’s illustration of a portly frog, telling his "name the livelong day to an admiring bog."

You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You by John Ciardi, illustrated by Edward Gorey
Funny, funny stuff! My favorite poem in this collection was one called "Mummy Slept Late and Daddy Fixed Breakfast." Apparently it’s the favorite of lots of other kids too! The added bonus of memorizing this poem is the addition of two SAT-type words to your vocabulary: "bituminous" and "anthracite."

RANDOM ILLUSTRATED BOOKS I LOVED
(these were ostensibly not for children, but they certainly did appeal to ME)

Gnomes by Will Huygen, illustrate by Rien Poortvliet
This elaborate book about gnome-life was not written specifically with children in mind, but I can recall poring over its pages as a child, and being fascinated by every little detail about gnome clothing, households, pets, food, and so on and so on and so on. I was, however, completely freaked out by the gruesome-looking, leaky-nosed trolls in the book and would flip past their sections of the book as quickly as possible. Ick.

The Homemaker’s Pictorial Encyclopedia of Modern Cake Decorating by McKinley Wilton and Norman Wilton (originally published in 1954)
My mother was not the "bake an elaborate cake for every occasion" type, so I’m not quite sure how this book made it into our home library. Perhaps it was a hand-me-down from my grandmother, who was at one time a home economics teacher? Whatever the case, this book landed on our bookshelves and then into my hands where it took up frequent residence. Bad black-and-white photos and a few mediocre color photos showed fancy cake designs with elaborate frosting curlicues, incredible floral arrangements, and a few very kid-friendly designs. For years I dreamed of having an upside-down bowl-shaped birthday cake with a Barbie-like doll jutting out of its center, her skirt (the cake) frosted to look like layers of silk chiffon or something else fancy-like. I might have been a tomboy in some ways, but I was not above dreaming of sickeningly sweet cakes with frilly pink icing. The cakes I loved most in this book, though, were the many-tiered wedding cakes with plastic columns between their layers and a fountain — A WORKING FOUNTAIN!! — perched on the bottom-most slab of cake. I thought the idea of having a gurgling fountain ON your actual cake was unbelievably cool.

Today, though, I’m much happier with life’s simpler sweet-tooth pleasures, like the carrot cake and brownies two of my colleagues baked for me today. No fountains in sight, thank goodness!

What were YOUR favorite picture books growing up? And what’s YOUR dream cake? Do tell.

(Inspiration for the title of today’s post came from Ani DiFranco. If you don’t know why I say that, listen/look.)

Sarah Nixon, one of our store’s veteran booksellers, recently confessed on her blog that she is (gasp!!)… a peeker. Yes, she peeks at the ending of a book before she begins reading it!

To those of us who are not thus inclined the very idea of reading the end before the beginning is horrifying. Unimaginable. Why would we want to deprive ourselves of a story’s suspense, of being surprised by where it takes us?

I am one of those "if you tell me how it ends I won’t want to read it" types. I HATE having the ending of a book (or movie or play) revealed to me in advance. I want to get there on my own time, with own two eyes, thank you very much.

And yet, I *know* a lot of you are not like me. A lot of you, like Sarah, like to skip to the last chapter and read it first, or read a book’s last sentence before you read its first one.

What I’d really like to know is WHY? When Sarah dropped by the store soon after the appearance of her "peeking" post, we had a funny conversation in which she sheepish confessed that she has NO IDEA what it is that makes her sneak a peek at the ending. Nervousness, you might be thinking. An anxious need to know where something is heading, perhaps. But I have to say that those aren’t personality traits I would ascribe to Sarah, a world-class marathon runner who’ll run 26 miles on an unfamiliar road in a country she’s never set foot in before. No, I don’t think Sarah’s the fretting type. I think her peeking tendency stems from something else… But I don’t know what that is.

Anyone have any theories? Want to confess and/or justify your own peeking? Have any other odd reading habits to share? You can easily post anonymously here, so please — do tell!