Children’s Bookselling

In the coming weeks and months, Bookselling This Week would like to shine the spotlight on booksellers who have developed special events to celebrate the Saturday, July 16, release of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Scholastic).

Strains of "At the Copa" may be heard as children's booksellers make their way to BookExpo America 2005 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center during the first week in June. Educational programming for children's booksellers is scheduled for Thursday, June 2, and the day concludes with a dinner and auction at Manhattan's legendary Copacabana to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Association of Booksellers for Children (ABC).

From her spot behind the counter at Diesel: A Bookstore, in Oakland, California, bookseller Melissa Lion recommends great reading from her current favorite genre, young adult fiction.

The Children's Booksellers and Publishers Committee, which is composed of representatives of ABA, the Association of Booksellers for Children, and the Children's Book Council, is inviting publishers exhibiting at BookExpo America 2005 in New York City to suggest children's book illustrators and authors for consideration as speakers at the Children's Book and Author Breakfast.

Usually, when an author's book is nominated for an award it is cause for celebration, but for author and eighth-grade English teacher Jordan Sonnenblick -- whose book, Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie, was nominated in July 2004 for the Young Adult Library Services Association's (YALSA, a divis

With the 2004 presidential election process in full swing, the Children's Book Council (CBC) has made available on its Web site, www.cbcbooks.org, an annotated bibliography of election-related titles for young people in grades K - 12.

The July issue of Building Blocks, the newsletter of the Association of Booksellers for Children (ABC), presented a column entitled "Pannell Best Ideas in Children's Bookselling." The column featured tips for booksellers by the winners of, and nominees for, the 2004 Lucile Micheels Pannell Awards, which are presented annually by the Women's National Book Association (WNBA) to recognize one general bookstore and one children's specialty store that have excelled at creatively bringing books and children together and inspiring children's interest in books and read

The Children's Book Council (CBC), an association of trade book publishers and producers of related literary materials for young people, has been steadily expanding its Web site with CBC Online at www.cbcbooks.org. The site, which is an amalgam of components for an audience of librarians, educators, booksellers, writers, illustrators, parents, and member publishers, offers many resources for the public.

Consumers spent more on children's books in 2003 than for each of the previous seven years, according to Ipsos BookTrends(SM), which announced results of 2003's key findings about the children's book industry in June. The report, based on continuous reporting from a panel of 16,000 households, found that consumer spending on books purchased for children under 14 years old increased nearly 11 percent in 2003 over 2002.

On Wednesday, July 7, NPR's Michele Norris interviewed three independent booksellers on the All Things Considered segment "Summer Reading Picks for Kids: Booksellers Make Suggestions for Warm Weather Tales." Norris spoke with Sheilah Egan of A Likely Story Children's Bookstore in Alexandria, Virginia; Johann Hauser-Ulrich of Wild Rumpus Bookstore in Minneapolis; and Judy Burlow of Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver.

This week, Book Sense is announcing the Summer 2004 Children's Book Sense Picks, based on the nominations of independent booksellers nationwide. The mailing of printed fliers to stores began on Tuesday, May 25, and booksellers should be receiving them within seven working days.

To review the Children's Book Sense Picks, click here.

On May 20, Horn Book, Inc. announced the winners of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards for Excellence in Children's Literature. First presented in 1967, the awards are given in three categories: Fiction and Poetry, Nonfiction, and Picture Book. This year's winners are:

Fiction and Poetry: The Fire-Eaters by David Almond (Delacorte)

Nonfiction: An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 by Jim Murphy (Clarion)