What a great (and ambitious) idea! The blogger who writes Vintage Children's 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

With so many of you, we share the sad news that beloved writer and teacher, colleague and friend Norma Fox Mazer passed away over the weekend after a sudden and courageous battle with cancer. Norma was an award-winning writer for children and young adults; she was also a lovely, wise, brilliant person whose warmth was felt by strangers and friends alike. She was a calm, good-humored presence, easy to relax around, with the most wonderful smile. But she was also alert, quick, incisive, and direct, a trusted critic and advisor.

Students at the Vermont College of Fine Arts called her the Sultan of Structure for her unfailing expertise in that ...Read More

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

Halloween is almost upon us, and we thought we'd share with you several new titles and a few perennial favorites to get kids of all ages in the mood for the spooky holiday that comes with candy.

To start things off, here's a great book to help families set the scene for creative Halloween festivities: Extreme Halloween: The Ultimate Guide to Making Halloween Scary Again, by Tom Nardone (Perigee, $14.95 ISBN 039953525X). Nardone, who brought us Extreme Pumpkins II last year, loves Halloween like Roseanne and Dan Connor of TV fame—the more gleefully grisly, the better. Lots of great projects for in and outside the house, from party tips and treats to full-blown haunted houses. Why not have an alligator in ...Read More

“It’s always been a dream of mine to open a bookstore.” We must hear this two or three times a week, sweetly confessed by starry-eyed book lovers. I don’t have the heart to tell them that, when you do have a bookstore, your dreams — the real ones, the nightly ones — change just a tad.

Here are a few recurring highlights from actual dreams Josie and I have had over the years:

The store is full of customers, you’re alone, and the cash register and POS system aren’t working.

The sections have all been moved; in fact, they’re changing while you look at them.

Your store is suddenly outside.

You’ve had to move your store from a great location to a lousy one, and grieve.

You need to get to work and can’t find your store in the strange...Read More