Independent booksellers across the country have chosen Sid Sharps's Midnight Manor: A Backwards Bedtime Book (Annick Press) as their top pick for the September/October 2026 Kids' Indie Next List. 
“Midnight Manor is full of funky characters, and unexpected details, ripe for poring over by flickering candlelight and revisiting again and again. Perfect for future goths, bug collectors, night owls, Edward Gorey fans, and kids with a silly streak,” said Ashley Franklin of First Light Books in Austin, Texas.
Here, Sharp discusses their work with Bookselling This Week.
Bookselling This Week: I love how all of your stories are on the creepy side, but I'm curious about where the starting point was for Midnight Manor.
What was the moment where you knew you had a story here?
Sid Sharp: I've actually been working on a very long graphic novel for kids about worms for years now.
I had a book come out in 2022 and one in 2024. At some point, I was having a discussion with my editor where we basically said it's too bad that this worms book is taking so long so I can't have a book come out in fall of 2026.
Then we got to talking about it. What if we just did something fun and small?
Maybe a cool set of prints that make a little mystery story, or a little card game, or something else that would just allow me to draw weird pictures of scary. Then somehow, even though we just talking about a few little drawings, it just turned into a book in the course of the discussion.
But I'm so glad that it happened that way because I really fell in love with making this one.
BTW: It's absolutely adorable. And the children yearn for scary stories.
SS: I feel like they don't get enough.
I was a kid who yearned for scary stories. And I honestly think that once I ran out of Goosebumps, there wasn't really enough for me. Then I turned to getting the pants scared off of me by The X-Files and the like when I was actually too young for them.
So I think there’s something genuinely useful about making scary stories for kids — for when they're not quite ready for The X-Files yet.
That theme song struck so much terror in my heart as a child. I really miss being so easily scared by things. After a whole life of consuming horror content, I'm no longer easily rattled.
BTW: Your editor's letter for the book pointed out that none of this art was done digitally. It's all analog.
Do you want to talk a little bit about your process and like how you create these?
SS: I just hate using the computer, and I don't think it would be worth it to do the job that I do if I weren't really, really enjoying it.
It's very important to me to keep to doing it in a way that I actually love to do, because it's a lot of toiling, and I have to love the toiling, or else what's the point?
I mostly stick to what works for me, which is pencil, watercolor, gouache, and ink on quite giant sheets of paper that then get scaled down for the book.
BTW: That's amazing.
SS: Yeah, I'm so annoyed about paper storage all the time, but it's worth it.
I'm constantly giving away original pages of my own books to children who like them. They're like, “Wow, this is a huge gift!” And I'm like, “Get it out of my house.”
I'm currently trying to figure out what to do with made a 7-foot-tall puppet version of myself that I made. Sid 2 is just hanging out in my home. I never know what to do with them. Sometimes they're just sitting at the kitchen table scaring guess.
BTW: Is there a monster or a particular thing that you love to illustrate — in this story or in general?
SS: In this book, the most fun spread for me to draw was when they all go dancing in the forest and they change.
They get taller and creepier than they used to be and all their teeth get longer.
The most fun part for me is always when I take something that was somewhat normal and then change it into something monstrous.
I like making everyday things into something eerie, I think.
BTW: That's an excellent answer. I think my favorite page of this particular book was the kraken in the sink.
I love the colors, but also that you’re not sure if he’s hindering or helping out.
SS: Yeah, totally. That was one of the only ones that I redid, actually.
There was an earlier version of that page where I was like, “He is too happy there in the sink.”
I needed it to be more ambiguous. He might be washing the dishes or he might be smashing them against the wall…
BTW: You were also at Children's Institute recently! So, a lot of our booksellers had a chance to meet you.
How was that experience for you?
SS: It was lovely.
People kept coming up to me and being like, “Thank you for being here.” And I was like, “Are you joking? I get to fulfill the childhood fantasy of living in a hotel and doing silly tasks.”
I've never had a job where you get to do a conference before, so that was very exciting to me. I felt like I was Kevin McAllister.
Everyone was just incredibly nice to me and actually happy to see me. I often say that I kind of subsist on compliments. I think everyone would love their job more if they received compliments on a daily basis about it. Being an author, you actually do get paid partially in compliments, and Children’s Institute was a lot of that.
There was something really magical about being around people who were specifically all obsessed with children's books.
That was just divine.
BTW: Would you tell us a little about the role of books or indie bookstores in your life?
SS: I've actually been working at indie bookstores for close to 10 years now — on and off at various different indies and — and it's probably my favorite kind of service job that I've ever had.
I don't really have time anymore, because of all of the making of books, but I still work just work 4 hours a week at an indie bookstore. I love it so much that I can't bring myself to quit.
I love the environment of an indie bookstore. I love talking to people all day about books, about what they’ve learned, and what book covers they like. Indie bookstores are my favorite place to be other than in my studio at my drafting table.