Children’s Institute, held at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland from June 11–14, brought together American Booksellers Association members and vendors from across the U.S. and Canada, a third of them CI first-timers. Booksellers discovered the next big things in the rep picks and galley room; met authors at the keynotes, Indies Introduce panel, and evening author reception; and took in educational programming. Those who stayed to the show’s bittersweet conclusion saw the ABA board perform a heartfelt rendition of “Lean on Me” during Drag Story Hour’s karaoke party.

“It was wonderful to see people lean in to community and celebration,” ABA CEO Allison Hill told PW. “The themes of reading as resistance and bookselling as a force for good were both evident and powerful.” She expressed the hope that booksellers leave the show with “recharged energy and spirit, and a renewed commitment to meeting this moment through their important work in the world.”

The meeting in Oregon was auspicious for those devoted to children’s and teens’ reading and intellectual freedom. Senate Bill 1098, which prohibits school libraries from removing books that are by or about protected classes of individuals, just cleared the Oregon House and is set to be signed by Gov. Tina Kotek this summer. In addition, a June 14 “No Kings” rally took place on the plaza outside the convention center, with creative signage and an energized Portland crowd.

Interactive Reading

CI 2025 programming anticipated booksellers’ key concerns. At a “Know Your First Amendment Rights” session, Philomena Polefrone, associate director of ABA’s American Booksellers for Free Expression, explained that “curation is the bookseller’s speech.” She noted that private, nonprofit, and mission-driven stores can carry a wide selection or take a boutique or niche approach. “Make a curation policy” and stick to it, Polefrone told listeners. She also addressed legislation such as Florida House Bill 1539 on material deemed “harmful to minors,” Texas Senate Bill 13 on “indecent content,” and North Carolina HB 636 on “vulgar” or “wholesome” books. Booksellers should raise their objections to legislators, Polefrone insisted, pointing to the defeat of Texas HB 1375, the so-called “bookstore bounty bill,” in May.

Education panels looked at challenges facing rural stores, suburban and urban shops, mobile and pop-up locations, and children’s-only bookstores, as well as ways to collaborate with community organizations. Several panels examined how to reach tween and young teen readers, and a discussion of “Bridging the Gap in Teen Lit” suggested that BISAC codes don’t necessarily reflect an indie store’s approaches or mirror a 12–15 year old’s preferences.

Middle grade reading was a priority for attendees including Mary Williams, general manager of Skylight Books in the L.A. neighborhood of Los Feliz. Williams told PW that ongoing evidence of a decline in middle grade reading convinced her to attend the show: “Those are our readers of 15 years from now.”

As booksellers think about remedying the dip in literacy and reading stamina that’s roiled the industry in the years since Covid, storytimes aren’t just for pre-K anymore. A well-attended session on “Activating Literacy with the Entire Family” recommended interactive reading between caregivers and kids. Booksellers said families could read aloud daily from books with cliffhanger chapters; prompt kids to talk about books, with reading guides or educator resources; pair a book in English with a heritage-language version; or pair a novel with its graphic novel adaptation.

Another crowded panel examined “Boomer Buyers and Millennial Money,” the art of selling books to parents and grandparents. The panelists said boomers might request “banned books” for their grandkids and are open to new spins on old classics like Rey Terciero and Claudia Aguirre’s Dan in Green Gables (Penguin Workshop, out now). The speakers also found millennials to be price-conscious, choosing paperbacks over hardcovers, with a soft spot for beautifully designed editions like Geo Rutherford’s Spooky Lakes (Abrams) or classics with heirloom potential, like HarperCollins’s new Chronicles of Narnia box set.

Allie Cesmat, book buyer at Changing Hands in Phoenix, said millennials might be guilty of the perception that “middle grade is for learning, and everybody else gets to read for fun,” thus requesting educational value in selections.

A generational shift is afoot among bookstore staff too. When the four millennial panelists asked millennial booksellers to self-identify, most hands went up, yet Gen Z made up at least 10% of the 100 or so people in the room.

Shining Forth

CI 2025 attendees enjoyed a wealth of keynote sessions, starting June 12 with an opening talk by library hero Mychal Threets. Friday, June 13, began with “There Is No Such Thing as a Silent Ally,” featuring five authors of queer and trans books. Moderator Lee Wind, whose Eleanor Roosevelt–inspired new picture book is Like That Eleanor: The Amazing Power of Being an Ally, illustrated by Kelly Mangan (Cardinal Rule, out now), compared the 8 a.m. panel to “the most fabulous queer dinner party, at breakfast!”

Making reference to author Carole Boston Weatherford’s comment that “knowing your history is generational wealth,” Wind established the importance of LGBTQ+ authors, books, and readers. He said bookstores can be allies by displaying queer books, citing writer Anne Lamott’s famous remark that lighthouses don’t look “for boats to save; they just stand there shining.” “Some books are going to be lighthouses,” Wind said, invoking the work of his copanelists.

Nimona creator ND Stevenson developed his illustrated novel Scarlet Morning (Quill Tree, Sept.)—about girl pirates exploring an evaporated salt sea—from a manuscript he wrote as a teenager. Reopening it, he said he felt like an archaeologist “finding an old treasure map that I barely remembered anymore.” Stevenson believes in “populating the world with characters who reflect the people reading it,” in all their flaws and potential.

Trans debut novelist Petra Lord, whose YA fantasy Queen of Faces (Holt, Feb. 2026) involves characters who swap bodies, wanted to create a novel in which “being trans was fundamentally woven into the world” and “having a fluid identity is something no one questioned.” She argued that storytellers “shape culture whether we intend to or not” through popular culture.

“I didn’t know I was nonbinary until I was an adult, because I’d never heard that word before, and I didn’t know that was an option,” said em dickson, who uses the pronouns e/em/eir/she and is the author of Beyond They/Them: 20 Influential Nonbinary and Gender-Diverse People You Should Know (Andrews McMeel, out now), illustrated by Cameron Mukwa. “I didn’t even know about half these people before I started writing,” dickson said, saying queer stories must be retold.

Claribel Ortega, whose fourth Witchlings book will be Scepter of Memories (Scholastic Press, Sept.), talked about wanting to create a story about “the un-chosen one, the kid who’s left over and cast aside” and “the power, the magic" in that everyday existence. Ortega—echoing a point Stevenson made about “incidental representation” versus issue-driven stories—argued that a book need not provide an overt lesson. Instead, she thinks about “the way we internalize our stories,” and the pleasure of reading about characters with identities that reflect one’s own.

Themes of identity and power also resonated in “How Can I Be Brave?,” the Saturday, June 14, breakfast keynote by Authors Against Book Bans leadership team member Samira Ahmed, author of The Singular Life of Aria Patel (Little, Brown, out now). Leah Johnson (Freedom Fire), owner of Loudmouth Books in Indianapolis, introduced Ahmed by saying that young people’s literature is “more important now than ever,” and Ahmed’s often censored titles give us “blueprints for possible futures.”

Ahmed, referencing the rise of authoritarianism in the U.S., spoke about why readers love heroes. “We are so drawn to superheroes,” she said, and we want to believe we too would “go into the belly of the beast, slay the dragon. That moment is now,” in a politically divided nation.

“Bravery is a choice,” not a given, Ahmed told the audience, and bravery is “completely uncomfortable and often scary.” When she writes, she thinks about whether her characters will choose to be brave and “use their power and privilege for purpose.” Ahmed challenged the audience to think about their daily choices too. “Maybe that novel you just gave to a kid is going to save their life, and you’re never going to know it—that’s power,” she said. “What’s that one act, that one choice, we can make every day to make things better for that kid?”

Ahmed leavened her barnburner speech with wry humor. “I’m preaching to the choir, I know, but sometimes you just need a pep rally,” she admitted. “Every single one of you in this room is on the side of fighting ignorance,” whether by testifying at state legislatures or by “ensuring that every display you have is inclusive, even when you get the side-eye from customers. Our bookshelves should reflect our world.”

CI 2025 closed with a paean to picture books by the 2025–2026 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Mac Barnett, introduced by Cathy Berner of Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston. Barnett is the author of books including The Three Billy Goats Gruff with illustrator Jon Klassen and the First Cat in Space series with illustrator Shawn Harris.

Barnett’s platform as ambassador is “Behold, the Picture Book!,” and he shared his philosophy with a like-minded crowd. “I think that the picture book is a great literary art form,” he said, describing picture books as hand-held theater performances, songs, or poetry, brought to life by the reader turning the pages. To convey the essential property of “words and pictures in tension with one another,” he shared Donald Crews’s suspenseful 1992 Shortcut, about a group of children walking home on a train track. He exhorted the audience to whistle the “whoo” of the unseen train, printed in the corner of the page and gradually increasing in urgency—a participatory activity that demonstrated the suspense of Crews's sequence.

“We have to believe children are worthy of art,” Barnett declared, firing a shot across the bow to non-believers in his picture book mission.

The next Children’s Institute will be held in June 2026 in Schaumburg, Ill.