MORE YOUNG ADULT! MORE MORE MORE.

If you have come into the store recently, you might have noticed that things feel slightly different right around the young adult section. That is because, let me gleefully tell you, this year the YA section achieved the holy bookstore grail of MORE SHELF SPACE. We now have an entire extra bookcase for this awesome and beloved (and you know we love it--have you seen all the recs we have up over there?) section. And we are doing everything we can with it.

Point One--We have a nonfiction section! From biography to history to self-help, you can check out the top shelf for some truly excellent books. Model is Cheryl Diamond's memoir of entering the cutthroat world of high fashion in NYC. In The Pregnancy Project, teenager Gaby Rodriguez feigns pregnancy to find out firsthand the limits of people's acceptance. Award-winning children's author Jack Gantos relates his time in prison in Hole in My Life. And here you can also find National Book Award winner Brown Girl Dreaming.

Point Two--Below nonfiction you will also find YA poetry and short story anthologies! Pro tip: short stories are a great way to find new authors, get around an antsy brain, or read on public transit. The Great War is a new anthology of World War II stories by incredible authors, each based on a real relic from the war. Love and Profanity will bring you a more modern realistic angle, and Rags & Bones is a very cool collection of retold classics. For poetry, try Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets For the Next Generation.

Point Three--All of your devoted kids' booksellers got to suggest some older books to bring in, books we desperately want to give you so that you can be as happy about them as we are. There are a bunch (and you should ask us when you see us what they are), but here are a few.

Kylie brought in The Looking Glass by Jessica Arnold, a quaint story about a girl who goes to a B&B with her family and then gets sucked into a Victorian version of the hotel by an angry ghost who probably wants to kill her. She also picked Kenneth Oppel's exuberant and exhilarating steampunk novel Airborn, which is one of her favorite books OF ALL TIME.

Clarissa picked Lauren DeStefano's Wither, the first book in the Chemical Garden Trilogy--a dystopian romance of epic bioengineering proportions--and Rick Yancey's The Monstrumologist, a satisfyingly creepy blend of mystery, horror, and monster thriller.

Amy got us four-books-in-one Balefire, which includes secret twins, secret magic, and New Orleans witchcraft--basically everything good--and Amelia Atwater-Rhodes's Den of Shadows Quartet, which is absolutely delightful supernatural fantasy about tough girls, beautiful guys, and scary close-knit families with weapons and magic powers. Also, AA-R wrote them as a teenager. We should all be so awesome.

I, Alex asked for the Chronicles of Chrestomanci by Diana Wynne Jones, because they are brain-tickling, lively, funny, wonderful fantasies. And if you like Supernatural or The Raven Boys or witchy, demonic, delightful books with great plots, you need to read Sarah Rees Brennan's The Demon's Lexicon IMMEDIATELY.

There are other things happening in our department happening all the time, and we will tell you about more of them soon. For now, come browse our bigger, better, more ultimate YA section! You will find happiness there. It is full of good things.

Just Take Note Of How Many Pages You Have Left

It's even worse when someone comes up to the register and buys the book you're almost done with.

April's Television Inspired Literature

We love fairy tales, fairy tale adaptations, and spunky princesses who defy gender norms, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that we love, love, love ABC's Once Upon A Time!

Here are some books we think you'll like if you're a fan of the show:

Alex Is Reading...YOU NEST HERE WITH ME

One of my favorite recent books to appear in the kids' section is a picture book, written by Jane Yolen and Heidi E.Y. Semple with art by Melissa Sweet, called You Nest Here With Me. It's a simply lovely winding down book that manages to be informative and soothing at the same time. Mixed media and deft, expressive watercolors illustrate the lives of wild birds from catbird to hawk, while the text declares where each of these birds sleep--punctuated with the (human) parent's gentle reassurance that, "You nest here with me."

Sweet without being saccharine, and supplemented with a few extra facts about each of the birds at the end of the book, You Nest Here With Me is one of my favorite bedtime books in ages--likely to soothe equally its adult readers and young listeners.

In case one bedtime book isn't enough (is one bedtime book ever enough?), here are a few more we have to share.

Wonderful Bedtime Picture Books

(that you won't immediately get tired of reading) 

The Going to Bed Book by Sandra Boynton

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, illus. by Clement Hurd

Llama, Llama, Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney

Goodnight Already by Jory John, illus. by Benji Davies

The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson, illus. by Beth Krommes

There's a Nightmare in My Closet by Mercer Mayer

Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site and Steam Train, Dream Train by Sherri Duskey Rinker, illus. by Tom Lichtenheld

Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book by Dr. Seuss

Power Down, Little Robot by Anna Stanesziewski

Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late! by Mo Willems

The Napping House by Audrey Wood and Don Wood

Orion and the Dark by Emma Yarlett

Somewhere around the end of this list, everyone should be getting sleepy. Happy reading, and sweet dreams!