This year marks ABA’s 125th year of helping indie bookstores thrive. As part of our 125th anniversary celebration, we’ll be sharing interviews with key figures in the industry and exploring how the organization has changed since its inception in 1900.
Gen de Botton is ABA’s Senior Manager of Children's Bookselling Programs & Education. As we approach Children’s Institute 2025, de Botton sat down with Bookselling This Week to talk about the Institute’s evolution over the years and the importance of children’s bookselling.
Bookselling This Week: Let’s start with a little bit of your background: How long have you been with ABA, and where were you before?
Gen de Botton: I have kind of always been in bookselling. I started at ABA in August 2015, so it will be 10 years by the end of the summer. Before that I was running a really small and lovely independent bookstore in Katonah, New York. It was a children's bookstore, a second-floor business above a coffee shop, and it was just absolutely wonderful. I transitioned out of the bookstore when it was sold.
So, I’ve been in bookselling for 22 years. But because it's bookselling, the work we do is always changing. It's a new experience every day. In an exciting way, it keeps you on your toes.
BTW: You would know more than anyone about the start of Children's Institute and how far it's come. What are some of the ways Children’s Institute has changed over the years?
GB: Absolutely! So, Children's Institute was initially an additional day that was added on to BookExpo. Then the first [standalone] Children's Institute was in San Antonio. My first Children's Institute was Ci4 in Orlando, and we had around 250 people.
The next year was actually the first Children's Institute that I worked on in my role as the children's manager and that was actually in Portland! So, it's come full circle. My first full Institute was in Portland and now we’re returning for this one.
Attendance has increased 10–15% every year since we started. Obviously, the pandemic impacted that growth, but when we returned to in-person Institutes we experienced a lot of interest and we had a substantial leap in attendance.
We've also increased the amount of education we offer. Education has nearly doubled since I started in this role, and we've added things like publisher education.
BTW: Thank you. I’d like to give you a chance to talk about children’s bookselling as a whole. Why is it so important for us to set aside time to talk about children’s bookselling?
GB: Let me start with this: I didn't choose children's bookselling. It chose me. And I think that goes for tons of people in the industry. It doesn't matter what your position is, whether you're a general bookseller or a children's bookseller or you specialize in poetry, it's something that finds you and you fall in love with it.
At the end of college — I was studying art history — I started looking at the illustrations in picture books again, revisiting the things that were really beautiful and meaningful to me in my childhood. I connected the dots and realized that the art in picture books is what made me want to be a creative person.
Children's bookselling isn't just the text, it's the experience. It lays the foundation for a lot of independent thought. Here's a good example: My nephew, who is now 12, wasn't a reader until three years ago when I basically handsold him Percy Jackson. He devoured it. Now, just a few weeks ago, he’s in the car explaining to my sister why ghosts have to exist, and he starts quoting a physicist that he read about.
I don't know many adults who go into the recesses of their mind, pluck out a fact, create a theory, and then provide documentation to support that theory. It was just brilliant. And I thought, “Wow, if this kid didn't have access to books, we wouldn't be talking about this.”
The ability to consume books has really shaped the person he is, and the person he will choose to become. I'm really proud of him for that, but also recognizing that the language that he has came from books. Children's books are the reason why we have adult readers.
If we think of booksellers like doctors, general booksellers are your general physicians. They’re a great help but they may not have all the answers. So, you turn to your specialists. Children’s booksellers are your specialists, and they run the gamut. They're cardiologists. They are psychologists.
Books create and reinforce new neural pathways. They can heal your heart. They can save you from sadness. Adult books can do that as well, but what's unique to children's books is that kids lack the autonomy to find what they're looking for.
And so, in steps the children's bookseller as a guide or a shepherd or a doctor, a specialist who can prescribe the right story, the essential story that heals or expands or supports that kid. Without children's booksellers doing their part in the social and emotional learning of children and the development of brains, the world would be a much different place.
BTW: A lot of times Winter Institute is described as “the big one” or “the formal one” and Children’s Institute as “the fun one.” How would you describe Children’s to someone who has never gone?
GB: When you go to Children's Institute, you're going to get everything you get at Winter Institute. You're going to get it in a more intimate setting, but you're going to get the same content. Some of that content is going to have the word “children’s” in it. But anybody in this industry should be able to extrapolate what they learn at Children's Institute and apply it to other areas of their business that may not be children's focused.
If we're talking about handselling, for example, handselling to a child and handselling to an adult are a little different, but you need empathy and social and emotional intelligence for both. You need to be able read the person who has come to you with a need that they cannot fulfill for themselves. So come to Children's Institute. Come to Winter Institute. You're going to get meaningful content no matter what. Children’s Institute is for everyone.
Is it fun because children's booksellers, in the best way, maintain their whimsy and sense of curiosity. (I do think general booksellers also have that sense of wonder, but it’s turned more inward.) Children's booksellers just want to share everything. They want to know what you love. They're not afraid of experimentation and they're not afraid of bringing their whole selves to the event.
It takes a lot of confidence to put on a character costume and walk around in a professional setting dressed as the pigeon riding the bus in front of the Senior Vice President of Marketing at Penguin Random House.
BTW: Where do you hope Children’s Institute and children's bookselling will go in the future?
GB: Short term, given the temperature of the current political climate, I would really love to see booksellers who are less interested in children's books really take up an active interest in them, that they would give children's books the same attention as they would a new genre. I would love to see more of that curiosity and exploration of children’s books. They are the bestselling category in the entire bookselling industry. Children's books will always be there. So, in the short term, I hope to see people getting more involved in the activism that surrounds children's books.
In the children's bookselling world, we always say that when things happen within the industry, they happen to children's books first. Book banning has been happening for a very long time. That hit us first. The books that were impacted were the books that you read in high school or college, but most mostly picture books, middle grade, and some young adult.
We started talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion in children's books decades ago. We started talking about own voices, diversity and representation, and windows and mirrors long before it was as widespread as it is now. I hope that more people get involved in children's books and see the real beauty that exists in them.
Long term, selfishly, I would love to see the sort of brawl that happens to get into Winter Institute for Children's Institute. I'm actually surprised that people have been sleeping on it for this long. I want people to be lining up at the virtual door pounding to get in because it is an experience.
But honestly, in the long run, I want to see a reinforced community — that includes everybody in bookselling — to support and protect children’s books.
I think that bookselling is one of the last free spaces to think independently, and preserving that space for thinking and free thought and community can preserve and enhance a civilization. And it starts with young people.