{"id":30788,"date":"2019-09-03T07:48:07","date_gmt":"2019-09-03T11:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=30788"},"modified":"2019-09-03T07:48:07","modified_gmt":"2019-09-03T11:48:07","slug":"the-magic-of-miniature-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=30788","title":{"rendered":"The Magic of Miniature Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There’s a dangerously appealing Etsy shop called Miniature Books USA that sells teeny classics. There’s even a complete Sherlock Holmes set, sold in a miniature bookcase.<\/p><\/div>
\nThere’s a magic to tiny things, especially when those tiny things are satisfyingly complete. Even when you yourself are very small, so that miniature items are\u00a0not so improbably sized, there is still a special delight in objects that do not conform to expectations. They seem made just for you, or for a fairy or brownie or visiting elf.
\nWhen I was little, I had a set of four little Laurent de Brunhoff books tucked into a box\u00a0called\u00a0 Babar’s Trunk, which looked like a treasure chest. While I don’t remember a single story from the box, I loved sliding the little books out, reading them, and fitting them back in, endlessly rearranging their order. Maybe I was a weird kid, but I’m\u00a0in good company. I can’t tell you how many customers’ faces\u2014both young and old\u2014light up when they come across a miniature book.
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Image courtesy of an Etsy listing (already sold).<\/p><\/div>
\nAt the store, a perennial favorite is\u00a0Maurice Sendak’s Nutshell Library, a delicious collection of four tiny hardcovers: Pierre<\/em>, Chicken Soup with Rice<\/em>, Alligators All Around<\/em>, and One Was Johnny<\/em>. As soon as we get it in, it sells.
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This 1962 original edition is on sale at Ebay for $125. But don’t despair – new boxed sets are available for $16.95 at your local indie bookstore.<\/p><\/div>
\nPeople are also charmed by adult classics in miniature form.
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from Miniature Books USA<\/p><\/div>
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From Miniature Books USA<\/p><\/div>
\nEven Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a miniature book collection that numbered\u00a0around 750 volumes! (See The Microbibliophile<\/a>\u00a0for more info<\/a>. It’s also a terrific site with lots of photos of tiny books.)
\nNot every miniature book draws a crowd, though. We haven’t yet had success with the\u00a0new Penguin Minis for teens. It may be that the horizontal (landscape) orientation of the pages throws kids off. (They look vertical in the box, but they open like a laptop.) The Penguin Minis in Bloom \u2014classics with pretty cover designs \u2014are very appealing, and I’m hoping will find their readers at our store.\u00a0\"\"
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\nI don’t know how the books are selling for Penguin, but if they aren’t doing as well as expected, reorienting the inside text to a regular vertical setup might help. That and making them even more miniature.
\nWhich leads me to the Miniature Book Society<\/a>, an organization entirely dedicated\u2014surprise!\u2014to tiny books. They host an annual competition and exhibition, which both individuals and publishers can enter as long as their books do not exceed 3″ in any dimension. To qualify for the grand prize, there must be at least three copies of your miniature book, but if you have a single copy, you can still enter the exhibition.
\nThe annual exhibition catalogs<\/a> are stunning, and people’s creativity astonishing. The books in this\u00a0catalog alone<\/a>\u00a0are just … beyond words. And in this one<\/a>. There are miniature book scrolls in tiny glass tubes, tiny novels in leather pouches, pop-up books no bigger than your thumbnail, collections of books held at the ends by microscopic carved\u00a0bookends.
\nSome examples from a recent catalog (and it’s worth while going through them \u2014 enchantment on every page!):
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\nIt makes me want to stop everything I’m doing and create impossibly small literature. That, or open a miniature bookstore. Think of the tiny overhead!
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\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A book lover’s enchanting rabbit hole to explore.<\/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-30788","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\/30788","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\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}