Let\u2019s face it, friends \u2014 Alison Morris was born to blog, as indubitably as Justin Morgan had a horse or Betsy was understood. No one can don A.M.\u2019s unique cap-sleeved jersey (imagine stepping onto a pro b-ball court wearing #23), or hope to stride seven leagues in her magical elf shoes. Her book-loving, t-shirt-shopping, birdhouse-decoupaging posts managed to snare as a reader even this bookstore owner, overworked and boggled as I am by the vastness of the literary blogosphere. And now Josie and I are supposed to follow that legacy? Can\u2019t be done. But we will do our thing, dawgs, and hope to amuse, inform, and engage you \u2014 and bring Alison back for several slam-dunks throughout the season.
\nTo introduce myself: I\u2019m co-owner of The Flying Pig Bookstore (est. 1996, wahoo!), and also an author with two picture books out, a third on the way, and a boatload of projects in various stages of completion (that I now learn from Alison can\u2019t be finished while serving as resident ShelfTalker \u2014 whoops).
\nBefore that, I was a school librarian in Manhattan (at the wonderful old City & Country School in the West Village), and studied English and American literature at UC Berkeley. In the 80s, I worked for a writer\/producer in L.A. and started a small press in San Francisco for a wealthy lawyer (who wanted to write his memoirs but instead let me put together a book of poetry by Tenderloin-district kids as a fundraiser for their program).
\nIn the early 90s, Josie and I met at Literacy Volunteers of New York City, me as a production manager for their publishing program, Josie in development, strong-arming wealthy patrons to contribute to a worthy cause (which, come to think of it, is sort of what she still does as an indie bookseller).
\nSo my life has always revolved around books, kids, and writing \u2014 which means I am delighted to take on this very exciting challenge of talking with all of you about our favorite subjects: books and the people who create, cherish, and share them with readers of all ages. I can\u2019t wait to hear from you all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Let’s face it, friends — Alison Morris was born to blog, as indubitably as Justin Morgan had a horse or Betsy was understood. No one can don A.M.’s unique cap-sleeved jersey (imagine stepping onto a pro b-ball court wearing #23), or hope to stride seven leagues in her magical elf shoes. Her book-loving, t-shirt-shopping, birdhouse-decoupaging […]<\/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-274","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\/274","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=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}