We have a number of goals for the 2021 Stocking Stuffer of the Year Awards. Our first objective is to highlight this year’s finest stocking stuffers and to honor their arduous, supply-chain-defying journey to DDG Booksellers. Second, we will seek to avoid the catastrophic shame of having yet another of our judges declare himself the grand prize winner. Year after year of broken promises by seemingly incorruptible stocking stuffers has almost shattered my faith in the character of our sideline items. This year, I am casting all my hopes for redemption onto a judge of impeccable repute, the very voice of the store, the Lord of our the Audiopet bluetooth speakers. I present this year’s judge: the acoustically amazing Audiopet Sloth.

 “How did we get here?” is a question commonly asked by people who inadvertently stumble into inter-dimensional portals and by unwitting time travelers. I ask and seek to answer it now in contemplating the reality that the American Booksellers Association’s (ABA’s) free speech arm, American Booksellers For Free Expression) ABFE, is now being subject to having its own speech constricted. While that may be a boon for lovers of mordant irony, it is a less happy development for those of us who bear the conviction that free speech is a compelling and vital process that must operate in accordance with its own core principle of tolerating all First Amendment-protected speech. 

I am writing today to explain why I resigned from the ABA Board after four and a half years of service. In September the Board voted to restrict its active support and defense of free expression by changing its Ends Policies regarding free expression to read as follows. “Core members have the resources in support of their right to freedom of expression.” This nebulous statement undermined ABA’s long established role as a defender of free expression in the literary world. Pointedly it constricted ABFE’s scope in representing the voices of ABA members. My objection to this change was a dissenting voice and I speak strictly for myself. So, how did we get here?

For each of the many years I interviewed Autumn I always made the long journey to her glade in order to speak with her. Not this year. This autumn I had the great pleasure and good fortune of having her come to the store for our interview!

Kenny: Thank you so much for making the trip to DDG.

Autumn: Delighted to come. I love the trees in your window, by the way. I feel right at home!

Bear Is a Bear is a rare and exceptional book which, beginning with our third sentence, we will refer to simply as Bear.  Bear Is a Bear’s Bear is a wonderfully imagined and rendered friend who we will call Bear. “Bear is” are a pair of words which begin every sentence in Bear’s account of Bear and that is a practice we will honor here.

Bear is a book made to share that you can hand to most anyone and tell them “you should read this one” and they will do so and then clutch the book to their chest with warm tears on the edge of their eyes. Bear is a book that leaves the store with its new person still clutching it to their chest. Bear is a book we keep a copy of near the register so that we can scan it in without its new owner having to relinquish it.

Bear is a litmus test which reveals whether a person has an engaged soul or is a dry husk walking the earth without benign purpose. Bear is a book we all love at the bookstore, even Nick, who initially claimed to be unmoved, and for whom we did an intervention in which it was revealed that he did feel something moving behind his crusty exterior and that on the day Bear escapes from that arid, scabrous shield, the book and its Bear will have saved Nick’s life by having kept the pilot life of his soul safe and lit until the day it emerges to reengage with the world.

Bear is a bridge spanning worlds and elements of time, from the fleeting eternity of youth to the spooling motions of age. Bear is a friend for every occasion. Bear is a companion around every corner until it is time for him to sleep in memory and then return to connect both one generation to another and one person to their past selves.  Bear is like the Bifrost Bridge only safer and less fraught.

Bear is a book to share right now; it is like an infrastructure bill that everyone can agree on, supporting the tasks at hand and the tasks to come. Bear is a book we will have at the bookstore as long as we are both here.

The relevance of first day of school books has never been broader nor  more challenging than it is today—the day that the 2021 First Among First Day of School Books champion will be determined. The central themes of these books—anxiety, foundering presentiments, clashes between expectations and experience, making adjustments to adapt to an evolving communal landscape—apply to just about anyone of any age right now. On the other hand, the peculiarities and uncertainties of school in 2021 reflect the broader world more greatly than the more insular and comforting traditional first day of school experience did.

Our winner this year will best address these complexities in a warm, reassuring, and relevant manner. It is true that more is being asked of it than was called for from our prior champions such as Edda: A Little Valkyrie’s First Day of School; Steve, Raised by Wolves; A Letter to My Teacher; The Pigeon HAS to Go to School!; and If I Built a School. Yet one would expect that this year’s standout would address transcending the vagaries of fate with aplomb.

I got an email this morning from a very good, dear, out of state customer, letting me know that a good friend of hers, someone she regularly has me pick out books for, is terminally ill. She asked me to pick out some books for her one last time with a special mind to end of life.

We often think of children’s books as a means for helping a child handle and grow from loss, but now I asked myself which books would mean most to an adult facing “the poppy that abideth all of us by the harbour of oblivion.”

I sought books that warmly, richly, and truly convey an enduring dynamic loss captured and cultivated in the integration of continued life and engaged memory. I picked out two novels and one picture books which embody this principle. The novels are Otherwise Known as Possum by Catherine Laso, and The Secret Horses of Briar Hill by Megan Shepherd. The picture book is Ida Always by Caron Levis, illustrated by Charles Santoso.

Otherwise Known as Possum is a remarkable affirmation of life enriched by loss, written by an author literally on her deathbed. It is truly a triumph of the human spirit and redolent with warmth and humor and truth.

I can’t think of any book that captures the power imagination has over life, especially as it’s narrative is forced to an ending, than The Secret Horses of Briar Hill. Nor a book that so strongly affirms the power of shared and affirmed imagination, which is a powerfully important aspect of friendship.

Picking a picture book was a toughie, as I really love Samsara Dog too, but to me Ida Always so perfectly affirms the power of living memory that no book could be more touching or supportive for anyone facing the end of life either personally or though loss.

Those were my picks. What would yours be?

When deeply moved to disapproval we often ask ourselves an important question: Is my displeasure just or petty? And so it indeed transpired when I learned that Amazon, having purchased the television rights to The Lord of the Rings and all related works, was actively producing a billion-dollar epic set in the second age of Middle-earth, presumably dealing with the fall of Numenor and serving as an all-around prequel to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

This initially struck me as an outrage on many levels, but as my temperature cooled I could see that this was not simply a case of an evil corporation violating the integrity of Middle-earth to further leverage their drive to market domination. The true problem lay in the mundane nature of Amazon’s exploitation. Using  Tolkien’s material to make a popular miniseries along the lines of other popular streaming successes such as Game of Thrones is offensive because it so utterly fails to make use of Amazon’s true strengths. The Lord of the Rings is a tale of an epic quest. Amazon, too, is on a quest. Should that not inform their undertaking?

One of the laws of bookselling physics is that if a book by an established author has the material to reach beyond their usual audience, it needs a cover which will both lure the perspective and reassure the established audiences. The case of Jay Kristoff’s new epic dark fantasy, Empire of the Vampire, is a peculiar one in that regard.

Shana Youngdahl, author of the young adult novel As Many Nows As I Can Get, is an exceptional writer. Having an author of her widely recognized ability and rising stature on the faculty of the University of Maine at Farmington has been a remarkable asset to both the university community and the community at large. Shana was hired as an English professor. Her ability as a novelist surfaced during her time here and was akin to having a rare jewel fall from the sky and land in the community’s lap.

Shana is leaving to take a new position as Assistant Professor of Creative Writing in the MFA Program at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri. This occurred not because she wanted to leave UMF or the Farmington area, but because her contract was not renewed and she was let go. Her departure speaks to a broader issue, the profound undervaluation of children’s literature by academic institutions and the literary community in general. There is a strong gender bias at work in that, equating children’s books and bookselling with child-rearing and women’s work.

I suggest that this is a spectacularly ill-advised bias. There is nothing more central to the human experience than the maturation process known as coming of age.  It encompasses the navigation of a changing relationship to agency, from being a subject of the world to being a creator of the world. The nature of responsibility, justice, love, personal identity, and morality are all intrinsically centered in young adult novels exploring the coming of age. What could be more important than an engagement with these issues? What could provide more of a bridge to adults working with teenagers and young adults than reading their literature? What could be more important than opening up to the persistent relevance of these issues to an engaged adult?

In my opinion, the failure to value young adult literature by academic institutions is a failure to appreciate the nature of their own mission. I’ll miss Shana deeply on an array of personal and professional grounds, but it is the needless nature of the loss and what that says about our social and cultural values, that I mourn most.

I’ve been given to understand that aliens are having a moment. With secret government agencies set to deliver The Disclosure, which will go way beyond the government’s recently released UFO Report, it seems a good time to me to hone up on our alien knowledge so that the shock of the revealed truth won’t be too overwhelming.

Consider too that in the wake of The Disclosure, aliens may soon gain even more traction in children’s books, dethroning unicorns and narwhals.

Find out now if you are under, over, or well prepared by taking the 10 question quiz I developed. Just click on the image of the first three questions below to take the real quiz.