\u201cLet us not wallow in the valley of despair.\u201d \u2014Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.\u201d \u2014\u00a0Maya Angelou<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
People have been streaming into the bookstore, all with a common desire: to share worthwhile\u00a0books with the people they care about. This passion is stronger than ever this year.\u00a0We can feel a shift in shoppers’ priorities; families\u00a0seem increasingly impatient with the consumer madness that overshadows what can be a warm, sparkly time at home with loved ones.<\/p>\n
They want quality, not quantity, and this year, they are choosing content over entertainment.\u00a0I don’t mean that people aren’t buying funny books, but snarky humor\u2014often so popular this time of year\u2014isn’t on their lists. People are looking for hope and greater understanding through\u00a0books, and they want depth with their laughter.<\/p>\n
In addition to the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>flying out of the store,\u00a0we’ve had a lot of demand for things like\u00a0I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Love and Joy<\/a>, <\/em>a lovely volume of poetry by Hafiz, and Mary Oliver’s\u00a0newest collection of essays, Upstream: Selected Essays<\/em><\/a> (pronounced “killer good!” by one of our staffers). There’s also a different aspect\u00a0to people’s\u00a0thoughtfulness about books, more felt than articulated. It’s not as “light” a year in mood, not surprisingly, as it was last holiday season. We have felt the commitment to meaningful books from all quarters. This year, our Snowflake Giving Program, which helps provide new books to\u00a0children and teens\u00a0through three local food shelves and nonprofit agencies, had the most children in need ever: around 200.\u00a0And while that was our largest-ever number of recipients, it was\u00a0also\u00a0the fastest completed drive we’ve ever had. Our generous customers\u00a0(who receive a 20% discount off the books and the joy of sharing their own family favorites with\u00a0their neighbors) seemed particularly\u00a0moved to participate this year.<\/p>\n “Hope will never be silent,”\u00a0said LGBT activist Harvey Milk, and I think we need to remember that Hope is always linked to action. Otherwise, it’s just a wish. Now, more than ever, we need hope, grit, and resiliency.<\/p>\n When the craziness of this season winds down a little, I’ll try to post a list of the books our customers have found most helpful, and most hopeful, in this season of change.<\/p>\n If you celebrate a holiday this season, what books are you giving for Chanukah or putting under your loved ones’ trees? Are\u00a0the kinds of books you are choosing this year any different from prior years? And are you feeling especially connected to books right now?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How this holiday season has felt different at the bookstore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nCustomers\u00a0buying books for children are especially interested when we recommend books that include hope and show resiliency of spirit in main characters. Since great books for children tend to excel at exploring those exact two things, there is no shortage of them to handsell. For instance, for middle grade kids, this means books like Kelly Barnhill’s The Girl Who Drank the Moon<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0Jason Reynolds’ As Brave As You<\/a>, <\/em>Susan Beckhorn’s\u00a0The Wolf’s Boy<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n