It has been hard to post here over the last few weeks, but I am determined to finish listing my favorites of last year (even if, in the end, it is simply a list). These are not necessarily my Caldecott predictions, as the books that I end up loving most are often not the sort [...]

I thought about doing a “best of,” but who am I to say that? Also,  the books I loved the most are not necessarily the BEST books of the year in some cases. I tend to rate highly on readability and sell-a-bility, being a bookseller.  Sometimes that coincides with the ones that are likely to [...]

There are some questions that children’s booksellers get asked over and over and over again, and one of them is “Do you have anything else like THE DOLL PEOPLE?”.
Beginning in February, my answer will be to hand them THE SIXTY-EIGHT ROOMS.
In the Art Institute of Chicago, there is a collection of sixty-eight miniature rooms called [...]

In honor of the early release of Chris’s new book THE CIRCUS SHIP, we are posting this video in which we ramble on like besotted maniacs about his books (for about six minutes). We made the video before the book had come out, thinking it wasn’t going to be released until mid-October, but we were [...]

Secrets are, by nature, phenomenally interesting.  (Also, they’re far better when they belong to someone else and you overhear them.)  It’s why we love James Bond and Alex Rider and Sydney Bristow and Jason Bourne…secrets are their livelihood.  It’s also why we love novels, because the act of reading fiction in itself is a form [...]

The main character in CASTRATION CELEBRATION is Olivia, a 17 year old who walked in on her professor father messing around with one of his students. She is on a rampage about the poor behavior of sex-crazed men, and, as she is attending a fine arts summer camp at Yale, has decided to use the [...]

What I did not know until I just went looking for her website is that Rebecca Stead is also the author of FIRST LIGHT, a 2007 book that I loved. (I don’t know why I didn’t know this; it’s right on the first page of the galley.) I handsold it basically as “a City of [...]

I am going to be able to sell SKATING SHOES! La la la la la la! In my head, I am dancing around the room and singing! Marry me, Random House – you’ve just made my whole week. I can’t wait for this fall!
(Psst: MOVIE SHOES next, okay? Please?)

I picked this galley up off Galley Mountain because I liked the plot description on the back. However, in the end I don’t know that it would have mattered overly much what this book was about, because the writer got me on page three with the following sentence: I shrug, though,since I don’t feel like [...]

I am not a big fan of the creepy, so this one sat on my pile for about a month before I finally picked it up. I can’t say I’m entirely glad I did, because I was absolutely right about it being extremely creepy, but I am glad to come here and tell you that [...]