ShelfTalker: A Children's Bookseller's Blog   

One of the single most charming things I've ever seen is this video, in which actor Brian Cox teaches a bit of Shakespeare to toddler Theo, who does a jolly good job with the material! Enjoy.

A combined Josie/Elizabeth post. First, Elizabeth:

One of the best things about events like the booksellers' conference we just attended (the American Booksellers Association's Winter Institute) is the opportunity to visit with authors and illustrators during dinners or parties hosted by publishing houses. These are very special evenings, because the bookseller/author ratio is pretty low, so we all get a chance to chat with artists whose work we admire, alongside the publicists who work so hard on behalf of their books. It's also great fun to meet and chat with other booksellers, something we all too rarely get a chance to enjoy. On top of all that, the food is always tasty, the lighting is flattering, and wine happens.

Last Wednesday evening, ...Read More

I'm in San Jose, California, for the ABA’s fifth Winter Institute, a gathering of 500 booksellers seeking two days of bookseller education. Here are my highlights thus far.

The morning started off optimistically with a keynote by Jack McKeown of Verso Advertising, who gave us a breakdown of a survey that his company did about book-buying behavior (the whole survey is available here). It was a fascinating presentation, full of good news in terms of book-buying habits. Baby boomers and retired folks read the most and they love indies. I'm giving you the down and dirty, but that was the upshot; read the whole survey to learn more. One great thing Verso Advertising is doing is creating and processing a survey for ABA in time for presentation at BEA; the best part about this is, booksellers can ...Read More

"If you can't measure it, you can't manage it." This famous quote has been attributed to Einstein and many business professionals. Who said it is far less important that what it means to a bookstore. Yes, we all have computerized inventory systems (at least I think we all do), but what does that actually tell us?

Well, I thought I knew my POS (point of sale) system pretty well and could navigate it smoothly. Then they went and upgraded on me and now I'm awash in a numbers fest that I'm loving. In one single report I can see the inventory turns (essentially, the number of times times you sell the dollar amount of your inventor. See this website to learn more about it).

Why are turns so important? Well, for one thing, they give an accurate view of what's selling in your store. The misleading thing...Read More

Poet Taylor Mali is pretty well known in educator circles, and I'm guessing half the world's teachers have his poem "What Teachers Make" taped to their walls. (If they don't, they should.) It was only recently, though, that I discovered his poem "Reading Allowed," which is too good NOT to share here.

Embedded below is a video of Taylor reading "Reading Allowed" aloud. I will warn those of you watching at work that, um, the start of this poem is pretty sexy. If you're worried someone will overhear and be offended, keep the volume low at the beginning, then turn it up! If you're worried someone will see you blushing, then...Read More

Warning: Inappropriate humor! (But I just can't help myself...)

Today I discovered that whenever someone purchases Mo Willems' book The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog from our store, the title is truncated on their receipt, so it looks as though they've purchased a book that is, um, not appropriate for the picture book section. (Take the last 4 letters off the title above and you'll see what I mean.)

Inappropriate as it may be, I can't help picturing the image, rendered in Mo's playful style, that might appear on the cover of such a book. Or the text balloons on the interior, which (to be honest) wouldn't have to change that much from those in the Pigeon books. Here's a page from Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, so you can, um, see what I mean...

...Read More

After months of promising you a proper post about Gareth's and my wedding, today's the day I deliver. What follows is a snapshot of our wedding day, with an emphasis on the more "bookish" elements. While books weren't exactly the theme of the day, we couldn't help but include them!



If after you read this you want still more info. about how the day went and (better still) more photos of what it looked like, visit the beautiful wedding blog Green Wedding Shoes, where our wedding is being featured today, and read the post about our wedding written by our amazing photogr...Read More

I find myself buried in summer 2010 catalogs and spreadsheets, so stumbling on this very funny retail-based website was a delight. The Customer Is Not Always Right is a hilarious site that allows readers to add their own retail interactions with customers.  I've included the bookstore link. Feel free to read the whole thing; there's something reassuring about all retail stores having the same challenges we do.

We've all had customers who befuddle us. They ask questions with vague details and then repeat them, endlessly, hoping against all hope that the third or fourth question, asked pretty much the same way, will suddenly shake our brains free. Not always true. This causes frustration all around.

A new thing I've noticed, perhaps because I never actually wear my glasses, is a customer stand...Read More

As winter really sets in, I find myself seeking out old favorites to read. Perhaps I'm odd, but I just love reading about people surviving harsh winters during the winter. I cozy up in my house in Vermont, dogs at my side, fleece blanket at the ready, and reach not for books about warmth, but for icy struggles of survival.

Nothing is a better read than The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The family struggles after a freak October snowstorm. Food stores are running low, it's cold and it's fraught. When Almanzo goes off in search of wheat (wow, not the food choice I'd go in seek of) it's tense and we wonder what's going to happen. I just love this book. It's a great book for kids to get hooked on the adventure of the everyda...Read More