ShelfTalker: A Children's Bookseller's Blog   

I'm curious what everyone is reading right now. Currently I'm reading two books: The Maze Runner and The Demon's Lexicon. I don't normally read this much fantasy, especially concurrently, but both of these are extremely compelling and I can't bear not to read a little of each every night; they speak to different audiences who I think will enjoy them as much as I am. My current challenge is to not leap ahead into the spring 2010 galleys, although they look very yummy. I'm trying to get ready for the holidays by reading some gems that I might have missed.

As we are approach the heart of the fourth quarter, I find myself eyeing my shelves thinking about what I can actively sell to all the various gift purchasers shopping in my store. I know what my favorites are: Wintergirls, The Lion & the Mouse, School of Fear, Once Was...Read More

The season for charitable giving (and giving) is upon us. I have been keeping track of the number of times this fall I've been asked to make a donation. Every day someone has come in or called at least once a day for the last forty days. Really, every day someone has asked the store for something: a gift card, a book, several books, a whole gift basket, etc., and all for very good causes. 

As a small business owner in a small community, it's hard to say no to anyone who walks in with a simple request. But as some point you have to say no. Or do you?

I give gift cards almost exclusively. I like the gift card because the auction winner has to come back to the store to redee...Read More

Guest blogger Kenny Brechner from DDG Booksellers writes:

As you can see from this PW article, Simon & Schuster is now selling e-chapters of books. As exciting as this advance is it doesn't go nearly far enough, which is why, at DDG, our crack team of scientists has just developed the next big advance for reading, the Corneal Lens "Pay as you go" E-Reading Register.

When you fill your car with gas you only pay for what goes in the tank, right? And that's the beauty of the CLERR™: you only pay for what you actually read. As easy to put in as a contact lens, the CLERR™ emits a colorless laser image which interacts with the CLERR&trad...Read More

I hope everyone had a splendid Halloween. I just wanted to report on two costumes I saw at the coffee shop across the street from the Flying Pig on Saturday.



I can safely say that I feel like I've now made it to the pinnacle of bookselling; someone made a costume from my store name! And aren't they adorable? Stephanie, the Flying Pig on the left, said she's been trying to be a flying pig since we moved to Shelburne three years ago. She kept waiting for someone else on staff to join her, and this year she finally got a co-flying pig, Emily, sort of like me and Elizabeth.

Here they are from the back. They insisted on this photo. They're very proud of their tails. And really, why shouldn't they be?
...Read More

What a great (and ambitious) idea! The blogger who writes Vintage Kids' Books My Kid Loves reads vintage children's books to her son and then reviews them at a rate of one per DAY, and sells some of the featured titles (most of which are currently out of print) in her Etsy store. So, for your daily fix of classic tales and illustration kitsch, check it out.  (Note that all you publishers wondering what backlist books might be worth reissuing might get some VERY good ideas here...)

This ...Read More

Fat issues loom large in our culture, as it were, and kids pick up messages about how they should look that batter their confidence at every turn. Literature for young people should be one place where kids don't find themselves mocked, dismissed, or shamed. I am not talking about books that deal directly with weight; it's the books that don't realize they are reinforcing negative stereotypes that concern me.

While we have all become accustomed to popular culture’s celebration of thin, what I didn’t expect is that books — the refuge of the chubby kid, the place where people understand the value of what lies beneath the surface, a land of acceptance and tolerance for difference — would come around to betray their readers. ...Read More

Displays, provided by publishers, can be a cash cow for any store. We call these displays "dumps" (if anyone knows why, I'd love to know) and generally they're a good way to sell books you love without having to handsell them to everyone who walks in. The mere act of having a display in a small store sends a message to your customers that you want them to notice this book, to pay attention to it and ultimately, to buy it.

Dumps haven't changed much in the 13 years I've had the Flying Pig. They are cardboard and designed to hold from nine to 48 books in a free-standing display. The only thing I've really noticed is they're not as big or difficult to put together as they once were. I remember Swine Lake by James Marshall came with a display that was so hard to put together I actually had two of my savvy teen customers put it together -- it took th...Read More

It's awards time! Well, mock awards, at least. I have been asked now by three book-y friends what my picks are for the Newbery, Caldecott and Printz awards this year. I love the mock awards because they get me really thinking about the books, and there's a great deal of cachet if you get them right.

So I'm throwing down the gauntlet to all you avid readers with strong opinions. What do you think will get the nod come January?

I'll start off:

Newbery: When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Caldecott: The Lion & the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney

Printz: Wintergirls by Laura Halse Anderson.

Come January, I'll announce who among our readers got the most right. I'm only going to count the winners, but if you want to list the two to three honor books per category, well, you ju...Read More

It's not just the kids walking in with swine flu. It's the adults, too. And since the name of my store is the Flying Pig, I am all too aware of the jokes that would abound if anyone on staff actually got swine flu, so I've forbidden anyone on staff from contracting it. Sure, we can call it H1N1, but we all know it's still the swine flu, and there have been many reports (OK, two -- I never said I wasn't an alarmist) of it in and around my town. And I don't want to get it. So, here's my list of what customers can do to make that happen.

- Do not stop at the store on the way to the doctor with your feverish bundle. Yes, books are comforting, but come in without the sick child who probably wants to go to bed as much I want him to, and we'll all stay healthy longer.

- If you sneeze into your hand at the register, please don't hand me your credit card....Read More

Price wars are all over the news. In fact, unless you lived under a rock, you'd be hard-pressed to not have heard about the Amazon/Wal-Mart/Target and now Sears (yes, Sears!) ever-escalating one-upmanship (or is it one penny-upmanship) for the ten hottest books coming out in November. Everyone has been weighing about how they feel about this, so I thought I'd take a moment and address it.

It's ridiculous. It's maddening and once again I feel like it puts independent booksellers in the very untenable position of being the folks who cry foul and get thought of as whiney. To sell the brand new Barbara Kingsolver novel, which I personally have been waiting for, for either $8.98 or $9 is on the one hand laughable, and on the other hand, it's a great bargain for folks who can't afford hardcovers right now. NPR had a segment on this and a customer was quot...Read More

The sheer ridiculousness of this video made me laugh out loud. Hope it does the same for you! John Howe (or, in his clay form, "Ickle John Howe") is an illustrator best known for his renderings of Tolkien's worlds. He and Alan Lee were the chief conceptual designers for the movies based on The Lord of the Rings, hence the focus here on Balrogs, and all the references to Gandalf. Howe's beautiful forthcoming book Lost Worlds is one of many titles we'll be featuring on our store's annual list ...Read More

We had a book fair that made money and I didn't have to do anything! I was stunned. The key to this book fair was having it in the store. 

A book fair involves my staff, usually me, ordering, receiving and packing up a shocking number of boxes and hauling them to the school. Then we would help the PTO volunteers unpack, inventory and set-up the book fair. Then for two and a half days if teachers remembered or felt they could give up a class period kids would stroll in and buy or not buy books. Sometimes the kids had money, more often than not they didn't. We'd have enormous hold stacks that would hopefully get purchased by the end of each day. We tended to compete with a used book fair running on the opposite side of the gym. This is not a set-up I recommend, but one we could not avoid at our school as both book fairs had run concurrently for decades. Trying to sell a...Read More