Independent Bookstore Day

This past Saturday was the fifth annual Independent Bookstore Day! This is a celebration near and dear to our hearts. Of course, we’re big independent bookstore fans, but did you know several Horn Book editors and reviewers — as well as many of your favorite children’s authors and illustrators* — were/are your friendly local indie booksellers?

From the IBD website:

Independent bookstores are not just stores, they’re community centers and local anchors run by passionate readers. They are entire universes of ideas that contain the possibility of real serendipity. They are lively performance spaces and quiet places where aimless perusal is a day well spent.

In a world of tweets and algorithms and pageless digital downloads, bookstores are not a dying anachronism.  They are living, breathing organisms that continue to grow and expand. In fact, there are more of them this year than there were last year. And they are at your service.

Here are our contributions to the celebration! Be sure to also look for “A Family Affair: Connecting Community to Books,” Monique Harris and Nicholl Montgomery’s article about Boston’s Frugal Bookstore, in the May/June 2019 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

“Foreign Correspondence: The Little Bookroom” by Margaret Robson Kett

Peter H. Reynolds and Jeff Kinney Talks with Roger interviews

“The Big Apple of Bookstores” by Shoshana Flax

* “Shelf Lives: From Bookseller to Bestseller” by Abby McGanney Nolan (January/February 2016 Magazine). Grace Lin, Julia Denos and E. B. Goodale, Leo Landry, and Amy Cherrix are a few others in this camp!

“When Pigs Fly: The Improbable Dream of Bookselling in a Digital Age” by Elizabeth Bluemle — who is herself an author (March/April 2013 Magazine)

Reviews of No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller and The Book Itch: Freedom, Truth & Harlem’s Greatest Bookstore by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, illus. by R. Gregory Christie

“Judging a Book by Its Cover (Because Sometimes That’s All We Get): What Makes a Good Bookstore Book?” by Terri Schmitz (September/October 2006 Magazine)

“A Children’s Bookshop in New Zealand: One Family’s Enterprise” by Dorothy Butler (April 1977 Magazine)

from The Horn Book http://bit.ly/2GQeTkZ