For the past couple of years, there’s been a surge in demand from teachers looking for books addressing kindness. Elementary schools have created yearlong curricula around kindness, and publishers have poured out numerous books — many beautiful and/or powerful, some preachy or simplistic — on the topic. And while I personally value kindness deeply, I have found myself wondering if this curriculum most effectively reaches those not particularly inclined toward kindness (whether due to temperament or environment), or if it helps children navigate difficult situations where kindness is not the key component of resolution.

For instance, let’s say two kindergartners are playing, and one deliberately knocks over the other’s block tower. We can remind the knocker-overer that her actions weren’t kind, which may or may not lead to remorse and apology. But how do we address the knockee, who is definitely not feeling kind toward her creation’s destroyer, help address the knocker, and help the two come to a satisfactory resolution?

One of the great things that came back this past fall, after a long time off, was our monthly meetings with BookPeople’s Teen Press Corps. Moving from our third-floor event space to the outdoor picnic tables, it’s been so great to get together, share ARCs, talk about what we’re loving (or hating), and catch up.

So, after a year off, I’m back with another round-up of rants, raves, and requests from BookPeople’s Teen Press Corps. From eighth graders through freshmen in college, our current group reads everything from period fiction to gruesome thrillers to intricate space operas. Voracious and opinionated, they jumped at the chance to share their current thoughts!

It would be a hard heart indeed that did not love the Iditaread. This time-honored reading challenge takes place during the Iditarod each year at the Mallet and Cape Cod Hill schools here in rural Maine, with each classroom becoming a sled dog team which reads its way across the race to see which team can read the most books. Each team has one Lead Dog and one Spirit Dog selected by their teacher. Here is the definition for selection provided by Mallett librarian Arika Galkowski.

In applying the United Nations’ hate speech definition to suppress works of literature, the American Booksellers Association (ABA) and the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) are engaging, with considerable and unhappy irony, in a fictional narrative in which they are actively employing an objective standard for censoring books. The central fallacy here is the understanding of these professional literary organizations that the UN supports using its hate speech definition as a standard for suppressing speech, which it  explicitly does not. Secondarily, their exercise of censorship is marred by the fact that the UN hate speech definition is overtly intended as a standard to be applied to direct interpersonal communication, not literature.  

Like most of my ShelfTalker colleagues, I’ve taken an extended break from blogging during the pandemic, as ever-shifting dynamics at the store pulled focus and finding a minute for reflection felt impossible. Now, a little over a month into 2022, after closing out the year with a successful holiday shopping season, I feel suddenly, tentatively hopeful that we’re reclaiming some of our familiar rhythms—a bit haltingly, a bit differently perhaps, but finding a little bit of our old selves nonetheless.

It was such a breath of back-to-normal fresh air to see the crowds back in the store over the holidays, clearly embracing the joys of getting out, shopping local, and talking books with their friendly neighborhood booksellers (a trend that has continued with unusually strong traffic in these traditionally lighter winter months). But for a store that typically revolves so heavily around events, festivals, and partnerships, the absence of those interactive collaborations over the last couple of years left a big hole—not only in BookPeople’s business, but in how we booksellers extend our mission beyond our walls and engage creatively with the role of books in our community.

Someone recently asked me in relation to the pandemic’s formidable, sustained power “what life is like in the store these days, what’s different and what’s the same?” A singular traumatic event is more concise in its changes. The pandemic is more like reading the same book at different points in life: it casts us back upon ourselves for answers that are deceptively hard to define because we have changed ourselves. We have become unreliable narrators in our own stories.

Well, hello, long-lost friends of ShelfTalker! After 10 years of blogging for PW, I took a looong hiatus as we scrambled and pivoted and launched ourselves into this new world of Covid-era bookselling. It is lovely to be back—especially this week, when the ALA Youth Media Awards were announced and so many glorious books earned medals and a world of new readers. This post celebrates two Vermont winners, and then shares the most heartwarming story we’ve heard lately, from a customer involving a young person, art, and a gift inspired by Peter Reynolds.

Our own brave little state of Vermont saw two of its finest honored with multiple seals. Kekla Magoon‘s Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther’s Promise to the People from Candlewick Press has so many awards they barely fit on the book jacket: National Book Award Finalist, Coretta Scott King Author Award Honor, Michael L. Printz Honor, and Walter Dean Myers Honor.

Oh, hello! Welcome to the new year, but quietly, please. Just slip off your shoes and leave the door ajar, and try not to step on that squeaky floorboard, OK? We’ll keep our voices low and our movements slow, and we’ll just quietly sit and sip some tea, and catch our breath for a minute. Perhaps all the evil humors of 2021 just won’t hear us, and we can slip through the first quarter of 2022 before anyone notices our conversation and wants to join us. Sit all the way across the room, if you don’t mind, and there’s some hand sanitizer on the side table next to that box of N95 masks – of course, help yourself!

As I entered the Glade of Years to interview The Year 2022, I made a startling discovery.

Kenny: Greetings, Year 2022.

Year 2022: Hello, Kenny.

Kenny: Um. I believe we’ve met before. Or else you bear a striking resemblance to the Year 2021.

Year 2022: Perhaps you are aware of the staffing and labor shortages which marked 2021?

Kenny: I am indeed. In fact, I feel most appreciative of having my wonderful DDG staff in place right now.