Bookselling - Blog Posts

Claire again. 

I finally got around to reading Bird & Diz written by Gary Golio and illustrated by Ed Young! 

And I have to say that I am amazed that this book didn’t win anything in the awards season this year! First of all, the illustrations are amazing. Ed Young’s use of color and motion with his mix of pastels, ink and water absolutely thrills me. You can feel the music of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie through Young’s illustrations. I felt like I was transported in among the lights and crowds of a stage watching Bird and Diz perform together. I have spent my morning listening to Bird and Diz at Carnegie Hall while I looked through the book again and again. 

Golio and Young were obviously well paired for this book. Golio’s text and use of words are so delightfully in-sync with Young’s illustrations. Golio epitomizes the rhythm and sound of the music while also showing the playful nature of the back and forth between Charlie “Bird” Parker and John “Dizzy” Gillespie. His text trips nimbly between poetry, beboppin’ onomatopoeia and prose. And the whole book illustrates so beautifully and joyously that “Bird and Diz are friends... who play together just like kids.” 

I absolutely love Bid & Diz. And I highly recommend that you go check it out at the library or get it from a bookstore. It will be worth your while!

Claire here!

Okay, so I have recently finished the lovely Kate Hattemer’s new YA novel The Land of 10,000 Madonnas.

It is about a group of 5 teenagers sent on a quest to Europe as a dying wish from their friend and cousin, Jesse, who died of a heart defect nearly a year previously. It is beautiful, sad, funny, bittersweet, and sometimes slightly gross. The gross factor is mostly due to Ben’s penchant for smoothies for every meal which sometimes include unusual choices for a liquefied meal.)

Kate’s sophomore novel reminded me a little bit of Maureen Johnson’s 13 Little Blue Envelopes. But I suppose that is more for the similarities between their teenaged characters going on trips across Europe after losing a loved one. I find Kate’s characters more real and relatable than Johnson’s. Cal, Trevor, Ben, Lillian, and Matt aren’t meant to discover some great and magical cure for their grief and then fall in love. They are and have been grieving. They deal with their grief on a daily basis and in myriad ways. And they are only beginning to come to terms with Jesse’s death. As teenagers, they are often prickly in their mourning, and don’t always agree. And like many teenagers I know, they do not say what they mean and feel immediately or clearly to each other. Hattemer’s portrayal and the perspectives she offers from her characters is one of her strengths in this book. They aren’t special in any extra way, they are normal, and they have been dealt a tragedy. And they react and exist accordingly. 

The book did take me a little while to get through, but that is in part because I tend to be a distracted reader and also this is a book that will make you think and reflect.  This is a novel that will be a good cathartic read. Hattemer made me tear up more than once while I was reading, but she brought me out on the brighter side at the end. I will be recommending this to fans of David Levithan, Maureen Johnson, Ava Dellaira, Emery Lord, and even John Green readers. I think that Kate Hattemer is going to be an author to keep an eye on and a voice to be heard in YA in the coming years.

Release date is April 19th 2016. I highly recommend it. And if you can, get it from a bricks and mortar bookstore or the library!

Claire here! I am back in the Kids store again at the bookstore. And the first thing I read yesterday morning was Vikki Vansickle’s new picture book. And I am so glad that JoAnn brought it over to me! (JoAnn, you have me hooked. If I Had A Gryphon is going to be my big story time book next week.) 

If I Had A Gryphon is written by Vikki Vansickle and illustrated by Cale Atkinson. It is about Sam, a young girl who has just gotten her first pet: a hamster. Sam thinks hamsters are not nearly as exciting as some of the mythological creatures she reads about in her books. So she starts thinking of some other pets that might be a bit more fun, but also perhaps a lot more work. Maybe hamsters aren’t so bad?

Ohmygoodness this book! I adore this for a multitude of reasons: the illustrations are adorable, there are mythological creatures everywhere, Vansickle’s rhymes are bouncing and delightful, and Sam is both whimsical and practical in an entirely enchanting way. Also that too cute kraken happily playing with a dismal blue whale and a sunken steam ship. That page cracked me up!

The mythological creatures in this picture book make me so so pleased. I loved mythology as a kid. I had all the giant collections of Greek and Egyptian myths I could get my hands on. And later I added Celtic, Norse, and Japanese myths to my collection as I found them. If there were beautiful illustrations, that made them all the better. Myths and the heroes, monsters and enchanted creatures depicted in them fed my imagination. And I have never entirely grown out of that phase. Vansickle makes me slightly nostalgic for those times when little 8 year old Claire was curled up on the couch with giant mythology books, much like Sam. And I really love that Vansickle and Atkinson are introducing these mythological characters to younger readers in such an accessible and fun way.

Vansickle’s rhymes are rhythmic and skip along as Sam considers what she could do with her more exciting pets and what their potential downfalls might be. The kraken one is honestly, pure gold. “If I had a kraken/ We’d swim and deep-sea dive/ But I would need a scuba suit/ In order to survive.”

Also Cale Atkinson’s illustrations just fill me with pink bubbly happiness. He manages to make manticores, kraken, jackalopes, and gryphons look equally joyful and cuddly. I just realized today that he also wrote and illustrated To the Sea, about a lonely boy named Tim who has to take a lost whale named Sam back to the ocean. (If you have not read it, you should, it is just as cute as If I Had A Gryphon.)

PLEASE go check out If I Had A Gryphon. You will love it. At the very least, it should make you giggle.

Hello! :) Bookwench #2 reporting in. Here’s a little about me...I’m Alia, I’m 27 years old and I love books, cake and Korean food.  I used to be an elementary school teacher in Daegu, South Korea for about four years. Daegu is famous for being hot (it’s in a valley), has lots of great food and people there have the best Korean accent ( it’s like a tough southern accent). With a background in teaching and experience in children’s bookselling, my contributions to The Bookwenches will mostly be children’s literature related.  I specialize in Picture Books. You have questions? I have answers. Need a suggestion? You got it. You like looking at pretty pictures?...WELL ME TOO! I also read quite a bit of middle grade and some YA. I like a little bit of everything; fantasy, historical fiction, sci-fi, fairy tale, realistic fiction, romance, coming of age novels, graphic novels etc.  One of my favorite books of all time is Zel by Donna Jo Napoli. Like Tori, I like that medieval, princessy but AWESOME story stuff!  In 2016, I’m looking forward to Sherman Alexie and Yuyi Morales’ new book Thunder Boy Jr. It’ll be Alexie’s first picture book!! If you don’t know him, just check out The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. You won’t regret it. I’m also looking forward to Pugs of the Frozen North by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre!  You can also check me out at my blog readitrealgood.com and I have a twitter @readitrealgood. On my blog I share diverse and excellent reads. It’s intended to be a resource for people looking for great kids books, especially ones focusing on diversity. I also discuss diversity in literature and publishing and share my thoughts from time to time. 

Nice to meet you...만나서 반갑습니다! 촣은 하루 되세요! ^_^

Hello from your friendly neighborhood Book Wench!

Since I’m the first of us slackers to actually post something on here, I figured I’d go ahead and introduce myself and our blog and what we’re about!

So, About Us:

The Book Wenches are a collective of fantastic booksellers, former coworkers, and eternal friends Alia, Claire, Jo Ann, Marita, Melissa, and Tori. Life has drawn several of us away from our beloved bookstore to distant and varied lands of the book industry. Thus out of a desire to keep in touch and to keep each other updated on the books we love, this blog was created!

While you will certainly encounter a wide range of genres, age levels, and interests here, we are all deeply invested in reading and promoting diversity in literature and are huge fans and supporters our faves @weneeddiversebooks.

We’ll be here to talk with you about what we’re reading–what’s new, what’s classic, what’s yet to be…and what’s good.

About Me:

Oh hey, I’m Tori! I’m 25, biracial, and coming to you live from the coffee shop I work in when I’m not out peddling books.

I primarily read Young/New Adult, but you can also expect a good deal of Middle Grade, some picture books, and occasionally an adult book or two (my attention span isn’t really capable of handling anything over 300 pages). The vast majority of what I read is Fantasy and Science Fiction (I am a sucker for a good fairy tale retelling), with a little Romance thrown in. I’m also a big fan of comics and graphic novels.

My favorite book of all time is The Two Princesses of Bamarre. The best book I read this year was Welcome to Night Vale (@welcometonightvalebook). The book I’m most excited about in 2016 is Catherine Egan’s Julia Vanishes (seriously guys, it is so good–I plan to read it at least twice more before it comes out in June)

Let's be friends