{"id":28053,"date":"2018-12-18T07:30:12","date_gmt":"2018-12-18T12:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=28053"},"modified":"2018-12-18T07:30:12","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T12:30:12","slug":"the-other-seasonal-bestsellers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=28053","title":{"rendered":"The *Other* Seasonal Bestsellers"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week, we ShelfTalker bloggers are each talking about\u00a0great sellers in our stores and last-minute recommendations. Yesterday, Leslie Hawkins shared baby books perfect for tucking into stockings<\/a>. Come back for Cynthia, Kenny, and Meghan’s posts the rest of the week!
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\nWe’re in it now, people! This hair-raising, full-bore run up to December 24, in which we try to\u00a0anticipate\u00a0every\u00a0conceivable kind of book people will come in looking for. This means a ridiculous amount of goggle-eyed ordering, one eye\u00a0on\u00a0past\u00a0literary loves and the other\u00a0on the brilliant\u00a0editions\u00a0in the current cultural swim. We know books like Michelle Obama’s Becoming<\/em> and Samin Nosrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat<\/em> and Jill Lepore’s These Truths<\/em> are going to fly off the shelves, but that’s just the tip of the holiday iceberg.
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\nWe beef up certain sections and\u00a0particular books that see major action this time of year: poetry, hardcover classics, boxed sets, gorgeous cookbooks, travel, and coffee-table books, pop-up books, sports books, and humor.\u00a0We know we’ll need tons of crossword puzzle books, Mad Libs, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Guinness Book of World Records, books of facts for inquisitive 7-9-year-olds, various types of almanacs, and anything new and funny that the Onion, Jon Stewart, or Stephen Colbert has created.\u00a0We stock up on our staff’s personal handselling favorites, and try to make sure we haven’t\u00a0overlooked any categories.
\nLocal books always do well at holiday time, and this year we have so many great ones! Our\u00a0bestsellers:
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\nCharlotte’s Bones: The Beluga Whale in a Farmer’s Field<\/em><\/a> by Erin Rounds, illustrated by Alison Carver. Kids love this true story of a whale whose bones were found in a local field.\u00a0This is a beautifully done book from Tilbury House.
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\nEnvironmentalist Bill McKibben\u00a0wasn’t previously known for humorous writing, but Radio Free Vermont<\/em><\/a> is a\u00a0delightful, hilarious\u00a0novel (for adults,\u00a0and older teens would\u00a0enjoy it, too) and a love letter to everything that’s unique and worth fighting to preserve in local communities. This is now in paperback, and we have to restock it practically daily!
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\nWhat surprised us most about the former VT Governor’s recent memoir is how open she allows herself to be. Always an articulate speaker, Gov. Kunin turns out to be a true writer and poet in Coming of Age: My Journey to the Eighties<\/a><\/em>, showing a warmth and honesty about this third chapter of her life, post-politics. It’s a wonderful little book from\u00a0the wonderful small, independent Green Writers Press.
\n<\/a>
\nAnother small house, Peter E. Randall, published a book by\u00a0business\u00a0entrepreneur\u00a0Larry Sudbay, with illustrations by Steven Kellogg. The Best is Yet to Be: A Collection of Inspirational Stories, Illustrations, and Quotations\u00a0<\/em>gathers together Sudbay’s favorite inspiring anecdotes gathered over decades, all with color art by beloved artist Kellogg.\u00a0This is another one on constant re-order.
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\nAren’t we lucky to claim M.T. Anderson as a Vermonter (at least part-time)?! The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge<\/a><\/em>, gloriously written by Anderson and gleefully illustrated by Eugene Yelchin, was a\u00a0National Book Award finalist and deserves every accolade.\u00a0In addition to being a fabulous adventure tale, it’s also a brilliant, satirical\u00a0dissection of politics, discrimination, and historical accuracy.\u00a0Take a look at the many starred reviews\u2014you will be wowed. Better yet, just\u00a0pick up a copy and read the first page. You’ll be hooked.
\n<\/a>
\nThis last VT bestseller isn’t from 2018, and it sells throughout the year, but this holiday season has seen a big surge in sales, in hardcover and board book, of Kim Norman’s Ten on the Sled<\/em><\/a>, illustrated by Vermont\u00a0artist (and Flying Pig bookseller!) Liza Woodruff.\u00a0You may know this rollicking\u00a0read-aloud for its rhymes and comic visual action, but\u00a0look more closely at\u00a0the illustrations\u00a0to discover a little subplot for\u00a0each animal. Such a cheery winter picture book!
\nAs for holiday books, we\u00a0have a lot of favorites, but slightly-off-the-beaten-path Christmas bestsellers\u00a0include Bonny Becker\u00a0and David Small’s recently revived (thanks, Nancy Pearl and Two Lions!) and longtime Flying Pig funny favorite, A Christmas Crocodile<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>Dylan Thomas’s beautiful A Child’s Christmas in Wales<\/a><\/em> (the David R. Godine version illustrated by Edward Ardizzone,\u00a0though we also love the New Directions edition), and the utterly charming A Unicorn Named Sparkle’s First Christmas<\/em><\/a> by Amy Young (FSG).
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\nAnd our surprise Christmas bestseller this year? Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas<\/em><\/a>, the Russell Hoban and Lillian Hoban 1971 classic, which\u00a0Jim Henson turned into a movie some years later. The story is a down-home version of\u00a0“The Gift of the Magi,” and we love that Doubleday brought it back into print in 2017!
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Make room, Michelle and Samin – we have some local bestsellers flying off the shelves with you!<\/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-28053","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\/28053","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=28053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}