![\"\"](\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/40294618991_0dbc19c3fe_o-1.jpg\")
<\/a>Hachette’s Jan Coco Day presents books to the staff.<\/p><\/div> Talking about books with the booksellers who will champion them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24650","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\/24650","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\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nOften we use our meetings to power through prep work, like making valentines to put up for some of our favorite authors or cutting gold stars for a unicorn display. But the meat of the meeting is generally devoted to book presentations. A lot of those presentations are mine, which obviously I love to do, but it\u2019s great when a pinch hitter can stop by in the form of an all-star sales rep! Until recently, Jan Coco Day was one of BookPeople\u2019s own, but now she\u2019s one of our four (yes, four<\/em>) sales reps who used to come to work with us every day. Now working for Hachette, she stopped by our meeting today to give the staff a look at some of her favorite children\u2019s picks and talk about what she thinks they might love.
\n<\/a>Since anyone who knows me knows I can\u2019t pull off an authentic y\u2019all, it shouldn\u2019t be a surprise that the quote in the header was part of Jan\u2019s enthusiastic description of the hotly anticipated Wild Robot Escapes <\/em>and not mine. During her presentation, our booksellers fell in love with LeUyen Pham\u2019s The Itchy Book<\/em>, erupted in awwws<\/em> over the cover for Alpaca Lunch<\/em>, cheered the return of Company\u2019s Coming <\/em>and Company\u2019s Going <\/em>from Arthur Yorinks and David Small, and argued over the ARC for Grace and Fury <\/em>(I think I saw someone sit on it to claim it for herself). Our events coordinator, Eugenia Vela, also shared her ongoing project to use an ARC of The Creativity Project <\/em>to re-focus on her own writing, something she\u2019s finding fun and rewarding.
\nThe book everyone wanted to talk about, though, was Ghost Boys <\/em>by Jewell Parker Rhodes. I don\u2019t think I have read anything that has truly tackled the topic of police brutality and racial bias for\u00a0a middle grade age group like this does. Framed around the police killing of a black boy who was holding a toy gun, this is really the story of all the boys taken unjustly before their time, boys who now form a heartbreaking, ghostly chain linking all the way back to Emmett Till. Undeniably a challenging topic for this age group, Jewell Parker Rhodes presents the shocking realities of this human crisis while holding out hope for human empathy and progress\u2014perhaps progress that young readers can play a part in forging. This is a book that begs to be read together and discussed, and one that will hopefully help families and classrooms explore topics that can be difficult to broach. That\u2019s exactly the type of book that booksellers need to be ready to discuss in depth, and these meetings give us the chance to informally share our thoughts with each other first-\u2014which is something that feels truly invaluable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"