ShelfTalker: A Children's Bookseller's Blog

October 30, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (3)

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

October 21, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

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

October 16, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

It is not often that a book is so completely wonderful that I am compelled -- nay, FORCED -- to continue reading it to the neglect of all items on my to-do list, but today I fell into not one but two such books, and I'm NOT sorry. (Though I may well be by tomorrow when I'm facing no small number of deadlines...) For now, I am indulging in the delight of today's distractions, as Toon Tellegen's The Squirrel's Birthday and Other Parties and ...Read More

October 9, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (9)

When Gareth and I decided to use poems for each of the readings in our wedding ceremony, we struggled, at first, to find ones we liked that were well-suited to the occasion but not overused. After I spent a lot of time collecting possible contenders from a range of sources, though, we found ourselves in the opposite position: there were now too many poems we wanted to include in some fashion. 

So, I took both the poems we used in our ceremony AND some that didn't make the read-aloud cut, and I incorporated them all into the decorations for our reception hall. How? See the poetry sign in the terrible) photo above? In a former l...Read More

September 30, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (6)

Gareth and I were recently at a party during which the topic of "names" came up in conversation, with people weighing in on what names they would or wouldn't give to their own children, how they'd felt about their own names growing up, what deliriously UNfunny nicknames they were tortured with in high school, and so forth. When I asked if anyone present had seen Laura Wattenberg's truly interesting book The Baby Name Wizard, which charts the popularity of names over time, making it a really interesting study in sociology, I was momentarily shocked to have at least three childless males respond enthusiastically to my question and say they loved reading Laura's blog on ...Read More