{"id":129,"date":"2009-09-21T08:10:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-21T08:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbicmsblog.reedbusiness.com\/elogic_660000266\/2009\/09\/21\/my-favorite-handsells\/"},"modified":"2009-09-21T08:10:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-21T08:10:00","slug":"my-favorite-handsells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=129","title":{"rendered":"My Favorite Handsells"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are lots of great books out there. Every day booksellers have the opportunity to literally place books in the hands of customers. The art of handselling is just that: an art. It involves quickl\"\"y assessing what the customer wants, even when they’re not sure, and more quickly finding a  book for them to consider.  Often I will just hand the customer one book to look at. I find sometimes that pure confidence in your choice makes it easy for the customer to trust the selection.<\/p>\n

My favorite books to handsell change with each season, but there are some that I just love season to season.  I’ve tried to pick one from each section.<\/p>\n

A board book that I just love selling is Good Night, Gorilla<\/em>. Charming art and a very clever story, full of humor, make this one an easy choice for people looking for a baby book that isn’t Goodnight Moon.<\/em>
\"\"Perhaps one of my favorite books of all time, Sector 7<\/em> is a wonderful adventure. There is something so magical about this wordless book. Every time I show it someone I discover something new. Because it’s wordless, it works for a myriad of ages from toddlers through adults. Every once in a while, I have to really walk someone through the book, because they don’t trust a book without words, but once I get going, usually they’re right there with me.<\/p>\n

Moving to chapter books, I have two that I love to recommend.\"\" I think of these as less common than the usual chapter books out there. I absolutely adore Johanna Hurwitz’s series that begins with Pee-Wee’s Tale.<\/em> Take a guinea pig who teaches himself how to read by readin\"\"g the newspaper on the bottom of cage, throw in a Central Park adventure and you’ve got a great book for emerging readers.  The other series I love to give to new readers is animal-based as well, More Favourite Anima<\/em>l Tales<\/em> by Jill Tomlinson. This is a collection of three of the books; they are also available as single stories (there are six stories in all). These feature animals having real human emotions. I like that both of these are series books, so kids can really sink in and enjoy.<\/p>\n

The middle grade section brings two very different handselling option\"\"s. The first, Shug<\/em>, is a fun book to recommend to girls (and boys) who want a little romance but aren’t ready for more than a first kiss. The book rings so true that kids actually handsell it better than I do. For kids who want more of a fantasy, The Las<\/em>t of the Really Great Whangdo<\/em>\"\"odles<\/em> is one of the all-time favorite handsells at the Flying Pig. I came to the book as a adult because my partner Elizabeth read it 25 times when it first came out in the 1970s, and it’s just so good.<\/p>\n

There are so many young adults books that are great, but there is one that I consistently go back to when kids are looking for realistic fiction that is well written and deals with tough topics realistically, and tha\"\"t’s Sarah Dessen. Dreamland<\/em> is my favorite book of hers because it takes the topic of abuse and really sheds a light on it. I always suggest that parents and kids read this one together. Another book that’s great fun to hand to readers looking for something different is Feed<\/em>. Nothing sells a book better than the first sentence of this book: "We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck."\"\"
These are just a few of my favorite go-to books — books that don’t often disappoint customers, that I feel really good recommending and selling.<\/p>\n

I’d love to hear from other booksellers about some of their favorite books to handsell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are lots of great books out there. Every day booksellers have the opportunity to literally place books in the hands of customers. The art of handselling is just that: an art. It involves quickly assessing what the customer wants, even when they’re not sure, and more quickly finding a  book for them to consider.  […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}