I’m cooking up a lengthy post about the many, many author and illustrator events we’ve hosted in the past month, but thought I’d entertain you all first with a look at the ideas I tossed around in anticipation of our event with Kate DiCamillo last Friday.

Because her new picture book Great Joy features an organ grinder with a fez-wearing monkey, my original idea was to order a red fez for everyone in attendance at the event, preferably embroidered with the words "Kate DiCamillo gives me GREAT JOY!" But alas, even cheap non-embroidered fezzes turned out to be surprisingly expensive. Or at least, they cost considerably more than the pens we had imprinted for our event with Rick Riordan. (A side note: I had to look up the plural form of "fez" to be sure it actually contained two z’s and learned that "fezzy" is an adjective. Ten points to anyone who can use it in a sentence.)

When the fez plan fell through I looked into hiring an actual organ grinder and monkey to "work the crowd" before our event. I figured there were slim odds of us finding anyone local who actually owned the right skills and props to pull this off, but lo and behold! A Google search containing the words "organ grinder" plus "monkey" and "boston" brought me to Hurdy Gurdy Monkey and Me, a.k.a. Tony Lupo and Coco (the monkey) of Newton, Mass., which is right next door to Wellesley! Had Tony not been out of the country last week, we might’ve signed him up for our DiCamillo evening. I’ll admit, though, that I’d was a bit nervous about this stipulation on Tony’s website:

"This is an INTERACTIVE PRESENTATION: This performance includes physical contact between the monkey and the audience. The client is responsible to provide… notification in advance if there are children attending your event that have allergies to peanuts, latex, hair, fur or any other allergy that would LIMIT OR RESTRICT physical contact with the monkey during our presentation."

Yes, like peanuts on airplanes, gone are those carefree hurdy gurdy days… (sigh.)

As it turns out, I needn’t have been so elaborate with my suggestions for saluting Kate. A few markers and a white t-shirt might’ve been enough to get the message across.

Here’s how Chloe Grace, age 8, shared her feelings for Kate (beside her in the photo below), which were first established a year ago when she read The Tale of Despereaux:

I think Chloe’s shirt shirt says more than any fez or monkey ever could.

A fellow book lover just called me from the floor of the National Book Awards ceremony with the news that Sherman Alexie is the winner of this year’s National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian!! Yee-haw! I love to see great acclaim go to worthy books, and this is certainly one of them.

I’ll be at NCTE Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of this coming weekend, helping Gareth introduce the English teachers of the world to his new King Lear graphic novel. Come by booth number 540 to pay us a visit, give me your ShelfTalker feedback, and share your impressions of this year’s conference! This will be my first time attending a trade show aimed at teachers, and I’m keen to see how it differs from those aimed at booksellers and/or librarians, specifically BEA and the ALA Midwinter meeting (my only library show experience to date). This will also be my first real experience working a show from the inside of a booth rather than from the aisles (which makes me sound like a trade show hooker, but you know what I mean). Publicists, marketers, sales reps—this weekend I’ll be tipping my hat to you, wondering how you flash those smiles, work that charm, and schlep those books so many weekends out of the year. Please send me your best booth survival tips. Or stop by often with chocolate.

I’ve been in three "M" states in the past two weeks — Massachusetts, Missouri, and Minnesota. Of course, in the first of these, most of my time is spent in a wonderful independent bookstore. In the second of these, as some of you saw in a previous post, I stumbled upon a wonderful independent bookstore. In the third of these I saw only the airport… which just happens to be home to a wonderful independent bookstore — one that specializes in children’s books!

If you’re going to be stranded at an airport or at least facing a lengthy layover, let me recommend that you TRY to do so at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. While it’s true that MSP did recently play a role in a certain political scandal, it’s about the nicest airport you could ever hope to see. High ceilings, bright airy spaces, functioning "people movers," and (believe it or not) high quality, atypical retail and restaurants. Among these, in Concourse C, is a small branch of one of Minneapolis’ famed independent children’s bookstores, The Red Balloon Bookshop, which is a stellar place to kill time between flights.

That’s exactly what Gareth and I were doing when I took the photos pasted below. The first shows the storefront shared by The Red Balloon Bookshop (windows on the right) and the airport’s Authors Bookstore (which is an airport chain, as best I could tell):

Here’s a shot of the side entrance that leads directly into the The Red Balloon Bookshop. Gareth is 6’3, the door frame arches way above him, and the ceiling inside the store is even higher still. This makes the store inside seem infinitely larger.

There’s me browsing below. Those circles under my eyes are evidence of my having woken up at 4am to drive from Lincoln, Nebraska to the Omaha airport before flying on to Minneapolis.

Here we see a woman browsing the nicely lit "Intermediate" and "Teen" bookcases, and we see just what The Red Balloon Bookshop chooses to call their middle grade and YA sections.

When was the last time you were in an airport with the option to browse a copy of The Arrival by Shaun Tan or Millie Waits for the Mail by Alexander Steffensmeier? You can see (if you’re adept at recognizing even teeny tiny dust jackets) both books face out in the middle bookcase. (An aside: I don’t speak German, so I don’t really understand anything printed on Alexander’s website, but if you follow the "Studien-Projekte" link then choose "Darwin Arbeitszimmer" you can pan the entire way around the circumference of a fully illustrated room. Wunderbar!)

Clever, I think, to have a regional section in the airport store, where tourists may want to pick up a book by or about the locals. Top shelf, far right: Horns and Wrinkles by Joseph Helgerson, a delightfully fun book I read aloud last summer to Gareth, a 9-year-old, and an 11-year-old. I’d be hard-pressed to say which one of us enjoyed it most. And look — on the second shelf from the bottom, the book with the green dust jacket? That’s This Is Just to Say by Joyce Sidman, which I previously named as one of my favorite poetry books of the year.

It’s clear that someone at this store puts thought into even their smallest book displays, carefully selecting books to fit a particular theme. Manners, math, and air travel were featured on the day we visited. (I like to think that they could be grouped together, positive air travel experiences being a combination of both good manners and math.)

Sigh…  Fixture envy. What a lovely store!

And speaking of lovely… I’m assuming The Red Balloon Bookshop gets its name from the French film Le ballon rouge. If you’ve never seen this short, almost dialogue-free gem, you’re in luck! You can watch it (as El Globo Rojo) in 4 parts on YouTube. And then, for a laugh, you can watch someone’s video of what they think ultimately became of that famous red sphere.

Fall is always a painfully hectic time of year for we booksellers—the time when I find myself feeling the most run-down, the most frazzled, and the most in need of a vacation, though there’s generally none in sight until January! Perhaps that’s why I was so grateful to read some of my colleagues’ comments today on what booksellers love about bookselling. Their remarks appear in the current issue of "Bookselling This Week."

Here are the quotes that resonated with me the most:

"I love to see people’s faces when they talk about their favorite book."

"I love my sales reps."

"I love that part of my job is to charm people so that they really like coming here."

"I love that talking incessantly—one of my traits—is actually a job skill."

"I love being one of the places in town people know they can come for good conversation."

"I love being able to introduce people to authors that may not be new, but are new to the customer."

"I love the look of surprise when someone says ‘You wouldn’t happen to have X, would you?’ and I have it! My favorite was when a snotty Boston woman (obviously thinking a Montana bookstore wouldn’t have anything higher-brow than Spider-Man) asked if I had heard of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and I asked whether she’d prefer the Fitzgerald translation or the Heath-Stubbs translation—I stock both. The look on her face was priceless."

"I love the compliments we get on our selection. I suppose most folks expect a small bookstore in a small town to just stock bestsellers and some local stuff—they don’t realize how indie stores show our personalities and how many hours we spend analyzing, reading, researching, exploring, and comparing notes with other booksellers to carefully hand-craft the stock in our stores."

"Probably the most unexpected thing I love about bookselling is BOOKSELLERS! The way booksellers so openly share every good idea—as well as great book recommendations!—is a joy. Booksellers as a whole are the most generous spirits and the finest citizens and friends I can imagine."

"I absolutely love when someone comes back in to thank me for a recommendation."

"A teenage girl was in the other day, buying books with her sister, and commented on how much she loves the smell of books. She said, ‘When I’m old and crippled, I’m going to come in here and just sit and breathe.’ I wanted to run around the counter and give her a giant hug!"

What do YOU love about YOUR job (as a bookseller, a publisher, a librarian, a writer, a reader…)? Give us all warm fuzzies—share your thoughts in the comments field! Booksellers, please also post your remarks on the ABA Bookseller-to-Bookseller forum thread where the above comments originally appeared.

I swear there’s no conspiring that takes place between we PW bloggers, but you wouldn’t know it this week! Today I discovered that The Book Maven (a.k.a. Bethanne Patrick) had beaten me to the punch when she posted a review of the same book my teenage sidekick, Katrina Van Amsterdam, is currently raving about. Serendipity! See Katrina’s remarks below.

Spud
by John van de Ruit (Razorbill, October 2007)

The year 1990: my birth, the end of apartheid, and the setting of the novel Spud by John van de Ruit. The boy Spud: actually named Johnny Milton, 13 years old, and a first-year student at a South African all-boys boarding school. The story of Spud’s first year at boarding school: brilliant, comical, and heartwarming. Van de Ruit puts a new spin on the classic tale of growing up as Spud experiences new friends, powerful ideas, and first loves. As we read Spud’s daily diary entries, we learn to love him and the wildly amusing group of teenage boys with whom he lives. Pick up this book, THEN you won’t miss out on a fantastic read, one that will both enlighten and entertain you. 

Greetings from Lincoln, Nebraska, where Gareth and I are paying a brief visit to my nonagenarian grandparents. Before coming here we spent a short time in Missouri, visiting my best friend, her husband and their two-and-a-half-year-old, and stumbling upon an independent bookstore in the historic city of Saint Charles, the second oldest city west of the Mississippi.

Main Street Books, formerly housed in a small school building, now occupies a cozy two-story brick space on a wonderfully preserved/restored Victorian street. I enjoyed browsing the store’s shelves, admiring their wonderful space, taking note of their unique book sections (e. g. Pioneering Women!) and talking with knowledgeable bookseller Betty Barro. But the thing that made me especially keen to feature this store was their clever use of one particular space — the kitchen in what was once an upstairs apartment. Rather than pulling out the cabinets and appliances as most stores would do, Main Street Books has left them in place and merchandised around, in or on them, creating a clever and unusual retail display space that works especially well for featuring (among other things) cookbooks! I took photos so you could see it for yourselves.

Below is a shot of the Main Street Books storefront, which faces a brick street that will soon be crawling with holiday carolers, Victorian Santas, and tourists galore. (The whole of Main Street gets into the holiday spirit during the annual "Christmas Traditions" celebration.)

As you enter the store and look toward the counter, your eye travels across two levels and up to the high, high ceilings that make the first floor seem bright and airy. I love that there’s so much to see but it doesn’t look cluttered. See the six steps on the right-hand side? You travel up those to get to the children’s section. To the left of what you see below is a steep wooden staircase that leads to the second floor.

Pictured below is the children’s section (board books, picture books, and non-fiction) on the raised level at the back of the first floor. The books’ bright colors stand out nicely against the exposed brick walls.

I love the idea of displaying books in the top lid of an old trunk, like the one in the photo below. What’s implied here is that each of these dinosaur books is a treasure!

It’s nice to see so many face-outs in the children’s non-fiction section:

The photo below gives me window envy. This is one was taken from the children’s section, looking toward the front of the store. Notice the staircase on the right.

Up the stairs we go, and head straight into the middle-grade section, where bean bag chairs offer shorter readers a place to relax:

If you turn your back on the middle-grade section and cut a bit to the left, you wind up with this view of the second floor, looking out at the street:

Turn your back to the street-facing view captured above, and voila! The store kitchen! Note the Christmas books that have been shelved (a bit haphazardly, as they’re probably coming in faster than they can be displayed!) in the kitchen cabinets. And, yes, that’s a stove on the far left. (There’s a refrigerator there too, but it didn’t fit within the frame of this photo.)

On the right, cookbooks:

In the center of the kitchen (and visible from the middle-grade section) is a nice face-out display of young adult books:

Heading back downstairs:

And here’s a nice parting shot of the front of the store, taken while peering over the stairway railing and waving goodbye to Betty, at the front counter below:

Thanks, Main Street Books, for a great visit and some creative inspiration!

So, I goofed. Remember how I expressed my extreme displeasure with an unnamed publisher’s plans to put a coffee-scented dust jacket on the cover of one of their forthcoming young adult novels in my "Smells Like Caffeine" post of 10/21? Scratch that. As it turns out, I misunderstood their intentions. The dust jacket on the novel in question will NOT, in fact, smell like coffee—the small scratch-and-sniff sticker affixed to said dust jacket will, but hopefully only when scratched.

Feeling both relieved and humbled by this revelation, I’m asking you to overlook my misstatements about this one publisher’s plans. Please don’t, though, overlook my feelings about the very idea of a scented dust jacket, as those certainly haven’t changed. (Ick!)

The past couple weeks have seen me running around like crazy, to author event after illustrator event after author/illustrator event. I’m working on a post that’ll bringing you up to speed on all of them, but first I give you this: a photo feature of one of my all-time favorites—our event with Jarrett Krosoczka last Thursday.

The background: a couple months ago, Jarrett e-mailed me to ask if we’d be interested in hosting him for a reading & signing of Punk Farm on Tour, before Random House sent him on tour to promote the book. He also mentioned that he’d be happy to do a free school visit in conjunction with the store event, which prompted a series of lightbulbs to go off in my mind. I knew a school that would be a great fit for Jarrett, and I knew what sat on the land immediately adjacent to theirs—the Natick Community Organic Farm. I’d never been there myself, but I’d seen it from the school parking lot, I’d often thought to stop at their roadside stand, and I knew them by stellar reputation. What better place, I thought, to host a farm-related book event than at an actual farm? So I called them, spoke with the remarkably enthusiastic Jane Harvey, and got her emphatic answer to my "Can we host this event at your farm?" question: "YES!!"

A few weeks later Jane told me she’d sent 7,000 fliers home with kids in the Natick school district and mailed 3,000 fliers out to families on the farm’s mailing list. She’d put a book and poster in each of eight public libraries in Natick and neighboring towns. "Can we hire you to do publicity for ALL of our events??" I asked her.

We didn’t get 10,000 people at Jarrett’s two afternoon farm events, but we did get about 55 people, which is pretty darn spectacular for anyone, let alone a picture book author/illustrator who hasn’t yet won the Caldecott Medal or topped the NYT bestseller list. Even better than the enthusiastic groups of fans at this event, though, was the setting. And the weather. And the joy of being outside and out of my windowless basement office and on what was a perfect fall day.

I honestly think last Thursday afternoon was one of the single most enjoyable afternoons of my bookselling career. Friendly crowd, friendly author, friendly hosts, fantastic space… I’m pasting some photos here so that you can see for yourself why Jarrett and I felt like we were (both literally and figuratively) in hog heaven.

Here’s the view as you drive up the short lane to the Natick Community Organic Farm:

The shot below shows some young new volunteers helping to muck out one of the barnyards, while each loudly announcing their success at having found the largest cow pie. Kid in black: "Mine’s WAAAAAY bigger!"

Here’s Jarrett beside the cozy woodstove, reading to the day’s first crowd:

And here’s Jarrett’s number one fan, Ben, who showed up wearing a visor he’d made that reads "I’m the Boss"—an homage to the hat worn by the farmer in Punk Farm:

Here’s Jarrett reading to another adoring crowd. (What a bunch of turkeys!)

And below, captured in my favorite photo of the day, are Jarrett’s BIGGEST fans. (Note that I could hardly take this picture because I was laughing so hard, and that Jarrett couldn’t stop commenting on the size of these guys. "I’m realizing I took a lot of liberties with my pig illustrations!" he said.)

Other animals we visited when Jarrett wasn’t reading or signing or answering my questions about his wedding, which took place three weeks ago (congratulate him!):

And here, finally, we see Jarrett accurately predicting what the Red Sox would be saying at the conclusion of this year’s World Series, a big trophy in hand:

There’s been lots of serious discussion emerging this week about J.K. Rowling’s pronouncement of Dumbledore’s sexuality, but it’s been great fun to see some entertaining spins emerging too. For one thing, New York magazine has written a list of "Ten Other Fictional Characters Whose Outings Won’t Shock Us That Much" that’s rather amusing. Better still, though, is The Onion, who’s done my favorite piece on the subject, in part because I couldn’t help feeling some affinity for the comments of Larry Hahn, Water Delivery Man. (And because Ralph Draper, Tow Druck Driver casts BY FAR the funniest spell of the week.)

I’ve been feeling frustrated with Rowling’s decisions to tell us more about her books’ characters than what she revealed outright in the books themselves. Today I found an essay by Columbia University law professor Michael C. Dorf that pretty well summarizes my thinking. Dorf says the following (and then compares this situation to the ways in which people interpret the U.S. Constitution): "[G]iven that the Potter books, now complete, make no mention of Dumbledore’s sexuality, Rowling would not appear to have any authority to declare the print version of Dumbledore gay, straight or bi. Her views on such matters are naturally of interest to fans of her books, but the work must stand on its own…. To be sure, learning something about an author’s intentions or life experiences may lead a reader to discover an interpretation that might not otherwise have occurred to him…. In the end, though, an author of a work of fiction is, at best, first among equals in interpreting that work. Her intentions do not control the meaning of the text."

I also agree with the thoughts of Rebecca Traister, a devoted Harry Potter fan at Salon.com, who writes the following:

There’s a very cheerful side to Rowling’s decision to directly address Dumbledore’s homosexuality. Throughout the series, she has been diligent not only in her narrative exploration of bigotry and intolerance, but also in her commitment to the inclusion of characters of different races, cultures, classes and degrees of physical beauty. It would, in fact, have been a glaring omission had none of the inhabitants of her world been homosexual…. But while it’s all well and good to see kids giddy at the news of their hero’s homosexuality, Rowling’s interest in making things perfectly clear (or queer, to borrow queer theorist Alex Doty’s pun), not only about Dumbledore but also about the future and livelihood of all of her characters, provokes thorny questions about the role and responsibilities of an author once she has concluded her text…. My brother, an adult reader who has been irritated by Rowling’s loquaciousness and was sent over the edge by this latest round of fortune-telling, said to me this weekend, "If she wants to tell us what happens, I wish she would write it in a book, because until she does, then as far as I’m concerned, she’s just describing what’s showing on the teeny TV screen inside her head, and that’s not playing fair."

I personally don’t like hearing about characters’ lives off the printed page, because to my mind that’s NOT those characters. Characters exist only as we know them as readers, and the information we’re given about them is what appears in the stories that are written about them and nowhere else. If an author believes something about her characters but doesn’t make those beliefs clear in her writing about them, there’s no guarantee that the reader will pick up on or share those same beliefs. Those character may not, then, "BE" what the writer envisioned them to be.

I think the semantics of Rowling’s original announcement are significant. “I always saw Dumbledore as gay,” she said. And that’s exactly it. SHE always saw Dumbledore as gay. But many of her readers did not, and it seems unfair now to suggest that they/we were somehow wrong.

As readers we each come to a book with our own ideas, our own experiences, our own interests, and those things inevitably influence what we see on the printed page. In the end, Dumbledore is gay if you read the Harry Potter books and believed he was gay, he’s straight if you read the books and believed he was straight, and he’s non-sexual if (like me) you just never bothered to think about his sex life at all.

No matter how you view it, Dumbledore’s sexual orientation has no real bearing on his significance to Harry Potter’s story, as it’s a fact that influences his actions off the printed page—a place we readers can go only in our own minds.