When autumn approaches it is time to return the favor, and so I sought her out for my annual interview to get some insight into which books published this Fall will be most worthy of our attention. I found her in high spirits and unusually preoccupied.
Kenny: Hi there, Autumn.
Autumn: Ah, I was wondering when you would turn up. Hail and well met and all that. Now mind yourself and don’t get in the way of our training.
Kenny: Training? Who is training and for what?
Autumn: Why, for the seasonal primacy of course!
Kenny: Seasonal primacy?
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I visited a local preschool this week to share some books during their reading time. We offer visits to pretty much anyone who asks, from schools to nursing homes to service organizations, sometimes bringing a guest reader (police and firefighters are especially popular) or a book rack and a few dozen titles for a mini book fair, or to present state reading award nominees (can I “booktalk 14 titles in 30 minutes, to 8 middle school classes in a row?”… yes, yes I can)  and sometimes just to share new releases that we’re excited about.
Regular visits outside the store are not only nice breaks in the retail schedule, but they keep relationships with local organizations active and offer the opportunity to meet additional school staff and administrators. While this particular preschool is one that I have visited many times before, the invitation for this week was from a new teacher, and as the school has grown by one class per age level, this was also a new group of kids to meet. Packing my tote with 4 picture books, a puppet or two, and a bottle of water, I confidently set out to greet my new friends, and reminded the store staff that I’d be back in about an hour.
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Requests for thriller and horror titles have been creeping steadily upward over the past year, and I realize that I’m not up on the best of the recent scariest kids’ books anymore. It’s been several years since horror had a strong fan base among our children and teen readers, but it seems to be coming back. Continue reading →

Killing off parents is a time-honored plot device in children’s adventure stories. After all, how are kids supposed to have the freedom of movement required to solve mysteries, follow bad guys, chase dragons, or generally save the world from impending doom if they have doting parents who expect them to be home in time for supper?

Likewise, being placed in a miserable foster home of one sort or another is a common springboard for drama and/or adventure in the lives of fictional kids. Most young readers and their parents seem to understand the need for the first choice and take it in stride without worrying too much about real-life implications. But does the miserable foster family device skew the impression that kids and adults have of foster families in the real world?
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When Hervé Tullet’s Press Here burst onto the scene in 2011, it became an instant must-have for every collection, proving that you don’t need a digital device—or even flaps, pop-ups, or fuzzy pages—to have a whole lot of interactive fun. His follow-up, Mix It Up, was equally successful, this time using clever instructions to immerse kids in color theory, seemingly allowing them to create new colors by dabbing blobs, shaking the book, and SMOOOOSHing the book’s pages together (ok, so the smooshing sound is just what we yell when we do it at home).
And now we have Say Zoop! It clearly follows in the steps of the others, yet also takes the format to a new level. The previous two books help kids enter into a planned experience through playful, yet carefully plotted prompts. But while those books trick kids into thinking they’re in charge, Say Zoop! actually puts readers at the helm, helping them create something that’s wholly their own along the way. The book’s basic rules are deceptively straightforward. If you see a blue dot, say oh. If you see a red one, say ah. For a yellow dot, say wahoo! But there’s nothing simplistic about it. Continue reading →

Something great has come to Farmington and its name is The New Commons Project. What is the New Commons Project, you ask, and what makes it better than the old commons? First let’s check on the Project’s definition of commons.
” A commons is something that belongs to all of us, a communally held resource from which no one can be excluded and for which we are all responsible. At the New Commons Project, we believe that art, literature, and ideas are a commons.”
Fair enough but what is the New Commons Project exactly?
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I love YA fiction, but I’m curmudgeonly about it. For instance, it’s taken me a long time to come around to tolerating first-person present-tense narratives. For my taste, they can too easily lend themselves to self-conscious, awkward descriptions (“I brush my straight brown hair out of my eyes and shrug my shoulders”), and the challenges of the format can end up making narrators sound interchangeable—a “uni-voice” of precocious, observant, wry teen girls telling their stories. And it makes me sad to feel cranky about them, because they are funny, insightful storytellers who just can’t seem to escape their first-person present-tense sand traps.
But! Every so often come books so skillful the format disappears and I get sucked completely into the story. Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give (HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray) was one of those stunners, and Erika L. Sánchez’s I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (Knopf, Oct.) is another.
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As children’s booksellers, our mission begins and ends with serving our community. This means not only championing great books, but getting out there and building curious, engaged readers. One thing I love about this job is that there are truly so many natural literacy partners and stakeholders out there who are doing great things and who love to collaborate. At the top of that list are the schools. We work more and more closely with our local school districts every year, and the more we work together, the deeper and more impactful our literacy programming becomes. We’re actively expanding our school partnerships in a number of ways, really focusing on the potential of this work through new festivals, citywide summer reading programming, bookfairs, and good old-fashioned author events.
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Kate Messner is a woman who makes things happen. Somehow, even without Hermione Granger’s Time Turner, she manages to get more done in a day than any three humans I know. In addition to effective time use, another of Kate’s crowning qualities is her generosity–of time, of energy, of information, of spirit. She is an author whose website and Twitter feed I love to point new and aspiring authors toward, because she doesn’t use her platform to plug herself and her writing; she uses it to share helpful resources and interesting news relevant to children’s book writers and lovers. She’s a major cheerleader for other authors, and she’s someone who values direct and immediate action. All of these qualities are evident in her latest effort, the #KidLitCares Auction for Hurricane Harvey relief.
Because she is a master of social media and connectedness and quick work, Kate has already gathered more than 200 auction ‘items’ to raise money for the Red Cross relief effort for Hurricane Harvey and its flooding aftermath. She’s blogged about the items up for bid with additional details and deadline information. You can scroll down the list on her website’s blog to learn about these amazing offerings, from Skype visits and manuscript critiques from authors, illustrators, agents, and editors, original artwork, signed books, career consultation with agents, and more.  Continue reading →