Hi Gothic Shoppers.
The throngs of you who flocked to our doors this past Saturday probably noticed that our doors were locked. At least, I hope you all noticed that; otherwise, our security procedures need some adjusting.
It wasn’t that we’d grown tired of servicing your book needs. No, we were engaged in that great retail ritual to which we all must submit: we were doing inventory. Now, those of you who have not worked in a bookshop before do not know the pure joy of a physical inventory. It involves pulling out every single book, magazine, card, and tchotchke, and scanning its barcode with a little raygun until a beep is heard.
It takes a really long time.
I’d like to tell you a story of how I came to enjoy the process, how I came to feel close to my fellow booksellers as we pursued some common goal. I’d like to say, even, that I was a ray of sunshine the whole time. If I tried to tell you this, though, my coworkers would murder me on the spot. (I acted like something of a you-know-what there towards the end, and I duly apologize)
No, none of us really came to feel anything other than dread and annoyance about the whole thing. However, it did give me a renewed sense of the scope of our stock here at the Gothic. I wasn’t paying too much attention to the titles of the books I was scanning; that just slows a person down. But once in a while I would surface from my ennui-induced walking coma to find myself holding a book on the conquest of the American West, or some random book on mathematics, or a book on making pickles, or Kevin Young’s volume of film noir poetry, or Foucault’s History of Madness, or (I’m not making this up), a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. And I’d think to myself: wow, we’ve really got the bases covered here.
If it sounds like I’m bragging here, well, I can’t deny it. We do have a seriously well-stocked bookstore, and, after all, the purpose of this blog isn’t to tell the world that we suck rotten eggs.
So, after all, in the midst of the hellish slog that was inventory, I once again found purpose as a bookseller, and was truly glad for the experience...
I’m kidding, of course. I hope I never have to perform that godawful task again. But we do have a lot of great books here.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Dang
Dang.
Not five minutes ago I caught a glimpse of some actual, honest-to-god sunlight through the coffee shop window. I dug my super-cool shades out of my desk drawer, summoned my co-worker Captain Courageous to man the front counter, and made a break for the outside. But by the time I got there, clouds had blocked out the sun, and that inescapable feeling of gloom that’s been hanging around for the last week or so was back in place.
I’ve been doing what I can to help usher in Spring, Gothic Shoppers. I hauled all those short-sleeved shirts out of the basement. I pumped up the tires of my bike. I’ve even been listening to the Meat Puppets non-stop, and if there’s any better way to draw down summer in a shamanistic fusion of noise and jangle, I can’t think of it.
It looked like it was working, too. We had a handful of nice days. Sitting outside days. Hiking in the park days. Days that promised a near future when you wouldn’t really be able to remember being cold. That was until, ironically, Spring Break. We waved adieu to the departing students, most of them off to warmer climes, and they left in their collective wake one (hopefully) final smackdown from winter.
It’s been almost a week of cold and constant rain. Colds are catching. Basements are flooding. Enough is enough.
Here’s what I’ve decided: I’ve been reading too many gloomy-weather books. Back when we in a serious drought here in the Bull City (those were the days), some bookseller colleagues and I made a list of as many books as we could think of that featured the word “rain” in the title. Our theory was that if we hit upon the right number we’d make some rain. Sure enough, our customers pitched in and we came up with a good long list, after which we got three days of downpour.
Now, Arthur and I don’t really like to be confronted with the fact that with these posts we’re basically shouting into the void, so I’m not going to throw out a plea for any Gargoyle readers to start listing books here. But I will pledge to either of you who might be reading that I’m going to do my part by reading almost exclusively warm weather books for a while. I’m going to try to get our customers to do the same.
I’ve ordered some of my favorite baseball novels for the store (you’ll hear more about those goodies when the Bulls’ season starts in April), and I’ll be shoving them into people’s hands as soon as they get here. That should get spring rolling.
For my part, I’m going to resume the Don Winslow kick that I had going for a while there. Winslow writes killer mystery novels set in southern California that can best be described as surf-noir. When Royal, my good bookselling pal, recommended Winslow’s The Dawn Patrol, I, um, voiced my skepticism. Emphatically. Shows what I know. Winslow is great at writing taut, suspenseful plots while evoking the sunny, laid-back lifestyle of surfers and beachdwellers.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned here on the Gargoyle that Padgett Powell’s Edisto is being reissued. You Gothic Shoppers should come buy a copy as soon as you can. You’ll be doing your part to drive out the late dreariness by diving into Poewll’s excellent novel of languid mischievousness in the South Carolina lowlands.
If these warm-weather reads don’t do the trick. We’ll have to resort to more drastic measures. I’ll keep copies of the Grapes of Wrath and the Worst Hard Time on hand, just in case.
And if I see anyone reading Call of the Wild or A Perfect Storm any time soon, there’s going to be trouble.
Not five minutes ago I caught a glimpse of some actual, honest-to-god sunlight through the coffee shop window. I dug my super-cool shades out of my desk drawer, summoned my co-worker Captain Courageous to man the front counter, and made a break for the outside. But by the time I got there, clouds had blocked out the sun, and that inescapable feeling of gloom that’s been hanging around for the last week or so was back in place.
I’ve been doing what I can to help usher in Spring, Gothic Shoppers. I hauled all those short-sleeved shirts out of the basement. I pumped up the tires of my bike. I’ve even been listening to the Meat Puppets non-stop, and if there’s any better way to draw down summer in a shamanistic fusion of noise and jangle, I can’t think of it.
It looked like it was working, too. We had a handful of nice days. Sitting outside days. Hiking in the park days. Days that promised a near future when you wouldn’t really be able to remember being cold. That was until, ironically, Spring Break. We waved adieu to the departing students, most of them off to warmer climes, and they left in their collective wake one (hopefully) final smackdown from winter.
It’s been almost a week of cold and constant rain. Colds are catching. Basements are flooding. Enough is enough.
Here’s what I’ve decided: I’ve been reading too many gloomy-weather books. Back when we in a serious drought here in the Bull City (those were the days), some bookseller colleagues and I made a list of as many books as we could think of that featured the word “rain” in the title. Our theory was that if we hit upon the right number we’d make some rain. Sure enough, our customers pitched in and we came up with a good long list, after which we got three days of downpour.
Now, Arthur and I don’t really like to be confronted with the fact that with these posts we’re basically shouting into the void, so I’m not going to throw out a plea for any Gargoyle readers to start listing books here. But I will pledge to either of you who might be reading that I’m going to do my part by reading almost exclusively warm weather books for a while. I’m going to try to get our customers to do the same.
I’ve ordered some of my favorite baseball novels for the store (you’ll hear more about those goodies when the Bulls’ season starts in April), and I’ll be shoving them into people’s hands as soon as they get here. That should get spring rolling.
For my part, I’m going to resume the Don Winslow kick that I had going for a while there. Winslow writes killer mystery novels set in southern California that can best be described as surf-noir. When Royal, my good bookselling pal, recommended Winslow’s The Dawn Patrol, I, um, voiced my skepticism. Emphatically. Shows what I know. Winslow is great at writing taut, suspenseful plots while evoking the sunny, laid-back lifestyle of surfers and beachdwellers.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned here on the Gargoyle that Padgett Powell’s Edisto is being reissued. You Gothic Shoppers should come buy a copy as soon as you can. You’ll be doing your part to drive out the late dreariness by diving into Poewll’s excellent novel of languid mischievousness in the South Carolina lowlands.
If these warm-weather reads don’t do the trick. We’ll have to resort to more drastic measures. I’ll keep copies of the Grapes of Wrath and the Worst Hard Time on hand, just in case.
And if I see anyone reading Call of the Wild or A Perfect Storm any time soon, there’s going to be trouble.
Monday, March 9, 2009
I'm Just Tryin' To Find The Bridge
It may or may not surprise some of you (well, any of the three of you who may be reading this blog) to read that while sitting in a stark white room, listening to a grown man make guttural sounds that were not in any way intelligible but that nonetheless constituted poetry, I encountered a new sense of purpose as a bookseller.
I know what you’re thinking: Again?
It’s true, I’m constantly redefining (or, at the very least, restating) what it is we booksellers do and why we do it. But in addition to the giant sack of money that the Gothic hands me at the end of each work day, what makes me enjoy being a bookseller is the multifaceted nature of the job. The interaction of customers, publishers, authors and booksellers provides for a job that is rarely the same from week to week. In that way, it’s very much like the game of Pinball, although we should probably not get started on that train of thought because then I’ll use up all my allotted space trying to lay out a cohesive argument for why there should be a Gothic Bookshop-themed pinball machine, preferably manufactured by Williams.(Which there really should be.)
So anyway, there are always more reasons out there to be a bookseller, and you can find them if you’re into the job. Which I am, so bear with me here.
See, a couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to be selling books at the poetry festival Infection in the Sentence. (Many thanks to Rebecca Gibson for making that possible) It was a great scene. The mix of poets, from Cecil Taylor to Susan Howe to Tracie Morris to Eileen Myles, was impressive in itself. But the energy that the poets generated in collaboration with the students who organized and attended the conference was something to see. Between readings the conference-goers would spill out into the hall to discuss what they’d just heard. It was, to borrow (steal) from the conference’s title, totally infectious.
Over the course of the meeting, I got the opportunity to chat with some of the graduate students and professors who were in attendance. Many of them are themselves poets and writers, whose books we’ll be keeping on our shelves for some time to come. It was clear that the experimental styles of the visiting poets had energized them, and one could imagine a straight line from the readings to the adventurous work that we’ll see from each of them in the future.
Now, I have to admit that I spent most of my time outside the readings. I was babysitting my table of books, and I was pretty well engrossed in Forrest Gander’s recent novel, As A Friend. (It’s a real stunner of a book and currently featured on our staff picks table at 30% off, hint hint.) At one point, though, a poet whose work I respect quite a bit gave me the heads-up that I needed to catch the Christian Bök reading in person.
If anyone had described to me a poetry reading that was to contain gibberish sound-spews, entire poems using but a single vowel, and invented alien-language love songs sung aloud, I would have fled in the other direction as quickly as I could. But I ducked into the room and was completely blown away by what I saw. The reading was precisely as I describe it above, but in practice it was closer to watching a punk rock show than catching a reading within the halls of academia. While I watched it go on, I had the feeling that I should be running out into the street and pulling people in by force to see what I was seeing. Because something as exciting as Bök’s work should be seen by as many people as possible, and not just by the people in the white room that rainy Saturday.
And that’s where we booksellers come in. At our best we can be a bridge between what happens within an academic community and curious readers who find themselves outside of that community. There’s no denying that experimental poets, novelists, and critics can drive global language and thought towards places as yet unexplored. But there’s an improved chance of that happening when readers have as much opportunity to stumble on such work in the course of random browsing as they do to discover it through intentional and guided study.
That’s why it’s important to us to keep work by experimental writers on our shelves. Sure, it’s not as profitable as loading up with copies of Twilight (which we do have on the shelves, at a 10% discount, hint hint). But it’s one of the ways that we serve both the Duke community and the community of Durham at large. We provide a commercial –which is to say accessible—context for challenging, progressive literature which seems less threatening by its placement next to more familiar and less intimidating books. It’s the democracy of retail (someone shoot me now, please, for coining that particular phrase), and if done right it vastly extends the reach of the impressive work being done and presented here at the University.
Right, thanks for hanging in there with me. Next week I swear I’ll just write about baseball books.
I know what you’re thinking: Again?
It’s true, I’m constantly redefining (or, at the very least, restating) what it is we booksellers do and why we do it. But in addition to the giant sack of money that the Gothic hands me at the end of each work day, what makes me enjoy being a bookseller is the multifaceted nature of the job. The interaction of customers, publishers, authors and booksellers provides for a job that is rarely the same from week to week. In that way, it’s very much like the game of Pinball, although we should probably not get started on that train of thought because then I’ll use up all my allotted space trying to lay out a cohesive argument for why there should be a Gothic Bookshop-themed pinball machine, preferably manufactured by Williams.(Which there really should be.)
So anyway, there are always more reasons out there to be a bookseller, and you can find them if you’re into the job. Which I am, so bear with me here.
See, a couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to be selling books at the poetry festival Infection in the Sentence. (Many thanks to Rebecca Gibson for making that possible) It was a great scene. The mix of poets, from Cecil Taylor to Susan Howe to Tracie Morris to Eileen Myles, was impressive in itself. But the energy that the poets generated in collaboration with the students who organized and attended the conference was something to see. Between readings the conference-goers would spill out into the hall to discuss what they’d just heard. It was, to borrow (steal) from the conference’s title, totally infectious.
Over the course of the meeting, I got the opportunity to chat with some of the graduate students and professors who were in attendance. Many of them are themselves poets and writers, whose books we’ll be keeping on our shelves for some time to come. It was clear that the experimental styles of the visiting poets had energized them, and one could imagine a straight line from the readings to the adventurous work that we’ll see from each of them in the future.
Now, I have to admit that I spent most of my time outside the readings. I was babysitting my table of books, and I was pretty well engrossed in Forrest Gander’s recent novel, As A Friend. (It’s a real stunner of a book and currently featured on our staff picks table at 30% off, hint hint.) At one point, though, a poet whose work I respect quite a bit gave me the heads-up that I needed to catch the Christian Bök reading in person.
If anyone had described to me a poetry reading that was to contain gibberish sound-spews, entire poems using but a single vowel, and invented alien-language love songs sung aloud, I would have fled in the other direction as quickly as I could. But I ducked into the room and was completely blown away by what I saw. The reading was precisely as I describe it above, but in practice it was closer to watching a punk rock show than catching a reading within the halls of academia. While I watched it go on, I had the feeling that I should be running out into the street and pulling people in by force to see what I was seeing. Because something as exciting as Bök’s work should be seen by as many people as possible, and not just by the people in the white room that rainy Saturday.
And that’s where we booksellers come in. At our best we can be a bridge between what happens within an academic community and curious readers who find themselves outside of that community. There’s no denying that experimental poets, novelists, and critics can drive global language and thought towards places as yet unexplored. But there’s an improved chance of that happening when readers have as much opportunity to stumble on such work in the course of random browsing as they do to discover it through intentional and guided study.
That’s why it’s important to us to keep work by experimental writers on our shelves. Sure, it’s not as profitable as loading up with copies of Twilight (which we do have on the shelves, at a 10% discount, hint hint). But it’s one of the ways that we serve both the Duke community and the community of Durham at large. We provide a commercial –which is to say accessible—context for challenging, progressive literature which seems less threatening by its placement next to more familiar and less intimidating books. It’s the democracy of retail (someone shoot me now, please, for coining that particular phrase), and if done right it vastly extends the reach of the impressive work being done and presented here at the University.
Right, thanks for hanging in there with me. Next week I swear I’ll just write about baseball books.
Friday, February 20, 2009
The Winter of Our Bookish Contentment
Friday's Guest Blogger
Stuart Wells covers book news and continuing education for the Office of News & Communications at Duke. He’s also in charge of news release production and distribution and the gathering of Duke-related news clips.
You’ll need an extra large book bag to hold all the new titles arriving this winter from the studies, offices and sabbatical hideouts of Duke authors.
From history to politics, from witch trials to the economics of obesity, Duke faculty have been generously sharing insights and personal reflections.
Oxford University Press has just published history professor William Chafe’s book, The Rise and Fall of the American Century: The United States from 1890-2010.
The book describes the rise -- and potential fall -- of the U.S., a nation more powerful, more wealthy and more dominant than any in human history.
Chafe also acknowledges the persistent challenges the U.S. has faced and continues to face -- inequalities of race, gender and income that contradict its vision of itself as "a land of opportunity."
And unlike our memories of U.S. history classes in high school, Chafe brings his account to the present day. The epilogue discusses important economic and political events through 2008, including the financial crisis and the 2008 presidential election.
By the way, Chafe’s groundbreaking set of interviews about African-American life in the segregated South, Remembering Jim Crow, is now available in an affordable paperback edition with a remastered MP3 CD of the companion radio documentary program produced by American RadioWorks. The book was also edited by Duke public policy professor Robert Korstad and Duke history professor Raymond Gavins.
---
Art and art history professor Kristine Stiles wrote the monograph-length survey text for a new book on the internationally renowned Serbian performance artist, Marina Abramovic. The book, Marina Abramovic, has been published by Phaidon in its artist book series.
As the first book in more than a decade to look at Abramovic’s work in its entirety, this monograph will offer a fresh take on an artist whose work is key to understanding the latest developments in contemporary art.
Abramovic was the winner of the Golden Lion at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997 for her piece "Balkan Baroque," a multimedia installation and performance.
Watch an excerpt on YouTube here.
Art historian Richard Powell's new book, Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture (The University of Chicago Press), offers a stunning visual tour of the evolution of black portraiture from the late 18th century through the modern day, linking art with slavery and the civil rights movement.
The term “cutting a figure” gained popularity during the 19th century and refers to people who make a spectacular display of themselves, he says.
One such figure, the legendary African musician Fela Anikulapo Kuti, is portrayed in truly iconic terms by Barkley L. Hendricks, whose Fela: Amen, Amen, Amen … could be viewed full size (60 X 48 inches) at the recent Nasher Museum of Art show. Powell writes that Hendricks’ Fela “employs his art as a creative offense and his body as a jump-suited defense against moral hypocrisy, political corruption, and, above all, social invisibility.”
This Month at Duke article here.
Professor Powell’s website here.
---
Law professor Jedediah Purdy’s new book critiquing America's ideology of freedom is getting the best kind of advance praise – a starred review in Publishers Weekly.
Coming to bookstores on March 3, Purdy’s A Tolerable Anarchy: Rebels, Reactionaries, and the Making of American Freedom (Knopf) is touted by the magazine as a “tour de force of engaged political philosophy.”
LINK/Publisher’s details:
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400044474
In his wide-ranging account from the author of For Common Things, we’re reminded that our ideas of self-mastery and freedom have given us both stirring liberation movements and pointless wars.
At this time when economic forces swirl beyond our control, Purdy believes realizing our ideals of freedom today will require the political vision to reform the institutions we share.
---
Visiting economics instructor Eric Finkelstein has been getting timely attention for his new book, The Fattening of America: How the Economy Makes Us Fat, If It Matters, and What to Do About It. Finkelstein, a health economist, told Politico earlier this month that tighter family budgets are making fresh produce and whole-grain foods less affordable, pushing families toward fast food and other less healthful alternatives.
---
Gerda Lerner, a visiting professor of history, is out with Living With History/Making Social Change, a stimulating collection of essays in an autobiographical framework that spans the period from 1963 to the present. The essays illuminate how thought and action connected in Lerner’s life, how the life she led before she became an academic affected the questions she addressed as a historian, and how the social and political struggles in which she engaged informed her thinking.
On Wednesday, April 1, at 3:30 p.m., at an event hosted by the Sally Bingham Center, Gerda Lerner will give a reading and book signing at the Biddle Rare Book Room in Perkins Library. The Gothic Bookshop will be on site to sell copies of the book.
---
Duke history professor Thomas Robisheaux is on the public radio/bookstore circuit this month to let folks know about the release of his new book, The Last Witch of Langenburg.
The release coincides with the anniversary of Anna Fessler’s death on the festive holiday of Shrove Tuesday in 1672 Germany. Fessler died after eating one of her neighbor's buttery cakes. Could it have been poisoned? Robisheaux chronicles one of Europe's last and most complicated witch trials.
He joined “State of Things” host Frank Stasio this week to talk about the roles
religion, gender and fearful imagination play in this vivid story and in
our society. You can listen to the segment here.
I’ll have a few more Duke books to share in a future post, but maybe that’s enough for now to keep us reading -- and thinking this winter.
Stuart Wells covers book news and continuing education for the Office of News & Communications at Duke. He’s also in charge of news release production and distribution and the gathering of Duke-related news clips.
You’ll need an extra large book bag to hold all the new titles arriving this winter from the studies, offices and sabbatical hideouts of Duke authors.
From history to politics, from witch trials to the economics of obesity, Duke faculty have been generously sharing insights and personal reflections.
Oxford University Press has just published history professor William Chafe’s book, The Rise and Fall of the American Century: The United States from 1890-2010.
The book describes the rise -- and potential fall -- of the U.S., a nation more powerful, more wealthy and more dominant than any in human history.
Chafe also acknowledges the persistent challenges the U.S. has faced and continues to face -- inequalities of race, gender and income that contradict its vision of itself as "a land of opportunity."
And unlike our memories of U.S. history classes in high school, Chafe brings his account to the present day. The epilogue discusses important economic and political events through 2008, including the financial crisis and the 2008 presidential election.
By the way, Chafe’s groundbreaking set of interviews about African-American life in the segregated South, Remembering Jim Crow, is now available in an affordable paperback edition with a remastered MP3 CD of the companion radio documentary program produced by American RadioWorks. The book was also edited by Duke public policy professor Robert Korstad and Duke history professor Raymond Gavins.
---
Art and art history professor Kristine Stiles wrote the monograph-length survey text for a new book on the internationally renowned Serbian performance artist, Marina Abramovic. The book, Marina Abramovic, has been published by Phaidon in its artist book series.
As the first book in more than a decade to look at Abramovic’s work in its entirety, this monograph will offer a fresh take on an artist whose work is key to understanding the latest developments in contemporary art.
Abramovic was the winner of the Golden Lion at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997 for her piece "Balkan Baroque," a multimedia installation and performance.
Watch an excerpt on YouTube here.
Art historian Richard Powell's new book, Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture (The University of Chicago Press), offers a stunning visual tour of the evolution of black portraiture from the late 18th century through the modern day, linking art with slavery and the civil rights movement.
The term “cutting a figure” gained popularity during the 19th century and refers to people who make a spectacular display of themselves, he says.
One such figure, the legendary African musician Fela Anikulapo Kuti, is portrayed in truly iconic terms by Barkley L. Hendricks, whose Fela: Amen, Amen, Amen … could be viewed full size (60 X 48 inches) at the recent Nasher Museum of Art show. Powell writes that Hendricks’ Fela “employs his art as a creative offense and his body as a jump-suited defense against moral hypocrisy, political corruption, and, above all, social invisibility.”
This Month at Duke article here.
Professor Powell’s website here.
---
Law professor Jedediah Purdy’s new book critiquing America's ideology of freedom is getting the best kind of advance praise – a starred review in Publishers Weekly.
Coming to bookstores on March 3, Purdy’s A Tolerable Anarchy: Rebels, Reactionaries, and the Making of American Freedom (Knopf) is touted by the magazine as a “tour de force of engaged political philosophy.”
LINK/Publisher’s details:
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400044474
In his wide-ranging account from the author of For Common Things, we’re reminded that our ideas of self-mastery and freedom have given us both stirring liberation movements and pointless wars.
At this time when economic forces swirl beyond our control, Purdy believes realizing our ideals of freedom today will require the political vision to reform the institutions we share.
---
Visiting economics instructor Eric Finkelstein has been getting timely attention for his new book, The Fattening of America: How the Economy Makes Us Fat, If It Matters, and What to Do About It. Finkelstein, a health economist, told Politico earlier this month that tighter family budgets are making fresh produce and whole-grain foods less affordable, pushing families toward fast food and other less healthful alternatives.
---
Gerda Lerner, a visiting professor of history, is out with Living With History/Making Social Change, a stimulating collection of essays in an autobiographical framework that spans the period from 1963 to the present. The essays illuminate how thought and action connected in Lerner’s life, how the life she led before she became an academic affected the questions she addressed as a historian, and how the social and political struggles in which she engaged informed her thinking.
On Wednesday, April 1, at 3:30 p.m., at an event hosted by the Sally Bingham Center, Gerda Lerner will give a reading and book signing at the Biddle Rare Book Room in Perkins Library. The Gothic Bookshop will be on site to sell copies of the book.
---
Duke history professor Thomas Robisheaux is on the public radio/bookstore circuit this month to let folks know about the release of his new book, The Last Witch of Langenburg.
The release coincides with the anniversary of Anna Fessler’s death on the festive holiday of Shrove Tuesday in 1672 Germany. Fessler died after eating one of her neighbor's buttery cakes. Could it have been poisoned? Robisheaux chronicles one of Europe's last and most complicated witch trials.
He joined “State of Things” host Frank Stasio this week to talk about the roles
religion, gender and fearful imagination play in this vivid story and in
our society. You can listen to the segment here.
I’ll have a few more Duke books to share in a future post, but maybe that’s enough for now to keep us reading -- and thinking this winter.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
You’re all so shy….
Events in the Gothic today (well, not exactly in) brought to mind children’s books. Arthur is the proud father of a new baby girl and I started thinking about what books I give babies. I know lots of people go the traditional route of Goodnight Moon or Pat the Bunny, both wonderful books and ones kids love, but I like to give lesser known ones and ones that I think are fun and hope that the parents will too since they are apt to have to read it out loud over and over and over. My current favorite is SouperChicken, a charming story of a chicken who can read and how this goes from being a bad thing to being a really good thing. Two of my favorites for little girls, as antidotes to the usual roles for girls in fairy tales, are The Paper Bag Princess and Cinder Edna. The Paper Bag Princess is the tongue-in-cheek story of a princess named Elizabeth who has to rescue her prince from a dragon. Cinder Edna is Cinderella’s neighbor who falls in love with the prince’s goofy younger brother, Rupert. There are two shoes left at the ball, one slipper and one loafer, and the contrasts between the two couples will leave you giggling.
So why, you might ask, did this start out with “you’re all so shy?” I know people out there are reading our blog, but no one ever answers my questions. What are your favorite kids’ books to give as gifts -- or read yourself? Show me you’re bold – comment!
So why, you might ask, did this start out with “you’re all so shy?” I know people out there are reading our blog, but no one ever answers my questions. What are your favorite kids’ books to give as gifts -- or read yourself? Show me you’re bold – comment!
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