In April, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Gene Luen Yang formally launched the Reading Without Walls Challenge. Inspired by his official platform, the challenge encourages readers to explore books of diverse voices, genres, and formats. My ShelfTalker colleagues and I chatted about the initiative all through April and decided to take turns writing about some of our experiences. Looks like I’m up first! Continue reading →

Turning the last page of Chandler Baker’s This Is Not The End I found myself wishing that were true. It’s a story you don’t want to leave. In the world of This Is Not The End, every citizen, on her 18th birthday, can apply to resurrect one, and only one, person. Resurrection not only restores a body to life but heals its physical defects in the process. With her best friend and her boyfriend dead in a car crash, her resurrection choice already spoken for within her broken family, and the days until her 18th birthday ticking away, Lake Devereaux is in a tight spot by any standard.
This Is Not The End uses the abundant drama of Lake’s predicament as a powerful fulcrum of self exploration and revelation. Chandler took the story in several directions I hadn’t foreseen, delivering a rich story that is both a taut thriller and a satisfying, multifaceted love story. As I see it, the book, which comes out in August from Hyperion, is not only terrific, but also exceptionally promising in the sales department. I asked its author to weigh in here on some spoiler-free topics from its pages.
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It’s a terrifying subject, teen suicide, and it’s in every newspaper this week. Our own state of Indiana ranks ninth in the country in adolescent suicide, according to the latest Kids Count report, and as high as in the top five of states for teens who have considered self harm. The release of the Netflix adaptation of Jay Asher’s novel 13 Reasons Why has created a storm of comment, controversy and concern from school administrators, counselors, parents and the media. Copies of the book, with its newer cover featuring the actors from the series, are selling more than other movie cover in recent memory or POS report. As booksellers, we are grilled by parents in the aisles: “have you read it? have you seen it? what do you think?” and kids who slide a copy across the counter, prompting this shopkeeper and mom to try to catch their eye and somehow discern in a glance whether they need a helping hand or just a bag and a bookmark.
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Books are magical, and bookstores are houses of magic. There’s something indescribably hopeful about being around all those stories and information on every conceivable interest or need—shelves and shelves of possibility jacketed in beautiful art. Familiar books are friends, while others are potential beloveds. Bookstores tend to be colorful, cheerful places, energetic but also soothing, restful, reassuring. I’ll bet my fellow booksellers can attest to the numbers of people who confide that they’ve come in for a little comfort after a hard week or a difficult loss. Sometimes these customers are seeking a book to help themselves or others through a painful time; at other times, they just want to soak up the warm papery goodness of being around so. many. books. Bookstores are like a literary bakery.
Because so many people look to bookstores for a little TLC, I’m always interested in discovering what others consider a comfort read. Here are a few of my own favorite books to revisit in times of trouble:
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Entering the Blanton Museum of Art takes you into a peaceful atrium of serene blue walls and striking sculptural drama. Dangling from the ceiling, the immense Siphonophora immediately catches your eye—a beautifully strange sculpture inspired by a sea creature that simultaneously functions as one entity and as many. When we entered on our way into the galleries in the quiet morning, the space evoked feelings of peace and connection to the natural world. But over the course of the day, as I saw the space fill with yoga mats and then the chatter of children on field trips, it transformed from an environment of stillness to one pulsing with energy. And I think that reflects my evolving understanding of the role a museum like the Blanton fills in our community.
I was there last week to launch a new collaboration between BookPeople and the Blanton to bring thoughtful illustrators like Javaka Steptoe into conversations about the role of art in picture books—and then use those conversations as a jumping off point for further art exploration. The Blanton uses books to facilitate art interpretation in their field trips already, so adding the voices of some of the illustrators seems like a natural and exciting next step. Continue reading →

One thing many booksellers have in common is a weariness of answering questions about the publication date of the third book in Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller trilogy. It is a weariness shared by others connected to the book as well. The author is sick of being asked about it, the publisher is sick of being asked about it, and readers are sick of asking booksellers about it. It has been over 11 years since my former Penguin rep, Peter Giannoni, mailed me an ARC of book one,The Name of the Wind, telling me that he thought I would like it (true) and that the author had written all three books while he was in grad school so there wouldn’t be a wait involved beyond the usual one year between each release (not true).
At this point, seven years out from when I read book two, Wise Man’s Fear, it seemed time to get some hard facts about the cause for the continuing absence of book three. The way I decided to approach this was to pull together a list of possible causes, and then ask someone who would know for sure if any of them were true. Fortunately Bast himself, one of the book’s characters, agreed to review the materials and give his assessment. First of all here’s the list.
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It is mud season in Indiana, as evidenced by my store floors, my dogs paws, and the spectacular crop of dandelions in our front yard that is still a bit soft to mow. The area farmers are out making huge piles of debris in the corners of fields that are too wet for plowing, so most late afternoons there’s a haze of smoke as they burn the sticks and branches blown down in spring storms.  We’re not quite ready to open the swimming  pools or drag the patio furniture out of the garage, but we’re all ready to be outside. Its a perfect time for kids and their grown ups to put on some boots and go investigate the crawly things under rocks and logs, and an even better time for a store display about worms.
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Everyone has an opinion about book covers: what sells, what kids will never pick up, what kids will pick up but their parents would never buy for them, what trends are in danger of oversaturation. Booksellers especially have opinions, because we see first-hand, all day long, how book covers (even their spines) affect how people select and reject books.
Because we see SO MANY COVERS coming and going, we have a lot of comparative data. We spot design trends quickly, and note which ones work and which ones fall flat. Covers affect our bottom lines as much as they affect a publisher’s, so we’re all invested in the same outcome: a cover that perfectly suits its book. Easy, huh? Not so much.
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Over the last couple of years, I’ve had the pleasure of a front row seat as long-time Spellbound customer Joanne O’Sullivan made the journey from submitting a manuscript to celebrating the publication of her debut young adult novel. We’ve had a lot of conversations about the joys and frustrations of the whole process.
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Last week I wrote a little bit about the fun of previewing new books at conferences like Children’s Institute. And that’s always a key part of these gatherings. But one of the big topics this year was the importance and resurgence of backlist, both as a sales trend and as one of the core ways stores express their points of view. We all put our own spin on our frontlist selections, but you’ll often see a good amount of commonality in the new arrivals section of any store at a given time. It’s really the backlist that indie stores choose to carry, and how we present it, that speaks volumes about our personalities.
I was on a panel about the topic, and I found it interesting to think about the ways we highlight backlist at the store. Because our store is physically large, we work staff selection rows into each section to cut through the density a bit and make sure our customers know where to look for personalized recommendations no matter where they are.
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