Breath of Fresh Air

Open this book, and you are in the middle of a glittery dark sky. Turn two more pages and you will find yourself in the midst of a garden filled with beautiful blooming trees. Soon, you will be captured into the world of Flory. Smaller than a clump of cherry blossoms, this little demanding night fairy doesn't want anyone to enter her lonely world, unless they can give her rides on her back to wherever she demands.

Friendship can take a lot more courage than you think you have. Through a hummingbird's promise, a ferocious and defiant spider, one very hungry squirrel, and a few other creature-obstacles, Flora soon learns that friendship is sacrificing your needs and giving back.

Laura Amy Schlitz's The Night Fairy is a fabulous read (even more so as a read aloud) for ages 6 and up. Without extraneous plot lines and scenes to clutter your mind around, reading The Night Fairy is like a breath of fresh air. Angela Barrett's beautiful, soft illustrations complete the world of a wondrous backyard garden hidden with danger.

If you are a nature lover, are somewhat adventurous, or love fairies, then look no further than this beautifully packaged book put out by Candlewick Press (2010). You can find an excerpt of the opening chapter at http://www.thenightfairy.com/#book.

Laura Amy Schlitz is also the author of Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, winner of the 2008 Newbery Award.

best assignment ever

My sophomore year in college, (what i can piece together of it)...involved a lot of East African dance, and a lot of reading. My professor Lorna Dee Cervantes (colossal poet activist all around swell lady) assigned a very simple task for her creative writing workshop...to go to a bookstore once a week, preferably an independently owned one...to walk up to the poetry section, and buy one book of poetry a week, based on intuition....don't think- grab one - throw the money down- and go.

I can't tell you how many of my favorite writers I found this way...writing roulette...I think it is important to buy poetry, to read poetry, and to write poetry. Poetry is the easiest thing to read and the easiest thing to write if you can take the time to find kindred writers, and take the time to trust your right to write it down...any of it.

Art should be affordable, accessible...I am drawn to poets who are largely un- experimental with their language and prosody...I am drawn to writers who aren't afraid to speak simply...and meet the reader face to face, and say what it is they are saying...

The reason a lot of people don't bother with poetry is that their formidable experience was one of a fear...a close reading of poems written by affluent white men, birds on fences, metered trochee, iamb, snore...If we could get more working class thinkers into our canon...we would have 7 full cases of poetry spanning our walls...

So my challenge to anyone who has bothered to read this far...Take a chance, and bring home a book (used if you're strapped) of poetry based on anything and everything...including its cover.

the new in the old

twinned body language reveals a long pairing,

circling the tables without looking, holding out
a book the other receives without looking

circling and returning
to peer over,
or around

"which one is that now?"
"this, i heard good things about it"
"yes, i've read that, i remember he's mute, i think"
"you've read it?"
"that's right. you don't know what i'm reading anymore,

because it's all electronic."

Shhh

qui·et
adj. qui·et·er, qui·et·est
1.Making little or no noise. 2. Free of loud noise; hushed. 3. Calm and unmoving; still. (American Heritage Dictionary)

Ferdinand the bull, a classic children's book character created by Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson, had it right the whole time. Moments of quiet and solitude are to be enjoyed over and over again. But, how often do we go through a day without stopping to hear the quiet of being the “first one awake”? What about the “jelly side down quiet”? The “pretending you’re invisible quiet.” “Too many bubbles quiet.” Join Deborah Underwood in The Quiet Book, illustrated with Renata Liwska’s charming illustrations, as she explores the variety of quiets that can be found in one day.

Listen to the quiets in your day. You will be glad you did! Maybe even stop and smell the flowers beneath a cork tree in Spain.

The heart of fiction.

Hello all,

This is my first post for the blog, so I should probably introduce myself. My name is Evan, and I am one of the more recent hires at the Booksmith. When I'm not watching over the business, biography, and cultural studies sections, I may be seen haunting the dollar racks in an attempt to further my plans of living in a house made entirely out of wonderful books.

But for the past little while, ever since I started looking into David Shields' new book, Reality Hunger (we've got him coming on Monday the 29th at 7pm for a reading), I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the theory behind fiction. I love that sort of analysis and critical debate, and it can gnaw at my mind for weeks.

Like many lifelong readers, I engaged with books before I could spell. My mother read to my sister and I every night before bed, and usually the book selection was dictated by what she enjoyed. There was Seuss. There was Silverstein. But sometimes there was Tolkien or Orwell, even some Kafka when she was bored (which I only knew of for the longest time as "The Cockroach Story"). The one thing that was general among them: they had to sound good out loud. As soon as a story started to bore my sister or I, we would veto it mercilessly (Lewis Carroll got the ax, embarrassingly enough).

I think it must have been around Halloween that my mother first read us some Edgar Allen Poe. Probably she chose it to give us a bit of a scare, to play with his beautiful language and his horrifying tales. But whatever the reason, I became hooked. As soon as I could read chapter books, I got his collected works, and I struggled to understand them. If there's one writer to whom I can attribute my lasting love of fiction, it's Poe, plain and simple.

Last week, when I was busy worrying over critical theory, wondering if my writing was part of the literary movement for which Reality Hunger is the manifesto, I learned that my girlfriend hadn't read much Poe.

So I picked up a volume I had just bought, and we tucked up in bed, and I read to her, in the most psychotic voice I could muster, "The Telltale Heart." And it doesn't matter how far I feel I've come as a reader, how many books I've devoured or how many stories written. There's something perfect about a book read aloud before bedtime, one that catches your breath and just sounds right.

I'll probably still be turning over the mechanics of fiction the next time you see me, and I'm looking forward to the reading by David Shields so that all these questions and theories can turn over and over again. But I think maybe I'll take some time between the thoughts of advanced meta-fiction to read more out loud before bed. After all, "The Cask of Amontillado" is just a little further on.

Kitties!

Surfers of the Internet might have met OMG Cat yesterday.

Just in time for tonight's writer, Clea Simon, who writes mysteries about a woman aided by the ghost of her dead cat. She's coming to talk about her latest, Grey Matters.

Not to judge a book by its cover, but how freaking cute can you get? Ms. Simon adds to the tradition of cat-based mysteries (see: The Cat Who... series by Lillian Jackson Braun). And there are other wildly popular cat books as well (see: The Warriors; Dewey).

I've been meaning to read Natsume Soseki's I Am a Cat trilogy for years now which, according to the publisher's blurb, "follows the whimsical adventures of a world-weary stray kitten who comments on the follies and foibles of the people around him" so that he might satirize the mores of late 19th century Japan.

My favorite writing about cats has to be Kelly Link's. In her ridiculously charming fantasies, cats aid and abet witches and save families from hordes of tiny homunculi riding bunny rabbits (in two standout stories in Stranger Things Happen).

And sorry, OMG Cat, my favorite cat video is and, despite overexposure, always will be, Keyboard Cat.

Don't Wake Me, I'm Reading

So says a fancy little pillow we used to sell in our divine and , oh so surprising, Card and Gift Room.  To find such an eclectic collection of sublime to ridiculous items smack in the middle of our bookstore is truly a surprise for  first timers.    Veteran customers know it to be THE place for a perfect gift plus card and wrap.  At the moment, it's bustin' out all over with spring treasures.

Back to the pillow, it reminded me of that dreamlike state one achieves when immersed in a good book.  There's really nothing quite like it.  You don't want to be interrupted.  You don't want it to end.  You want everyone you know and love to read it.  When you put it down, you have been a long way off and are distracted.   Sometimes you're laughing out loud, other times weeping copiously, sometimes even both.  Plus you always learn something - could be a  delicious tidbit or a whole swath of history or a culture entirely new to you.   

It occurs to me that good movies do the same thing.  I know I'm always plugging books in my blogging, but guess what?  Movies come from scripts written by writers.   So, they qualify.  For that matter, songs do, too.  Lyrics are...written.   The written word RULES.

Okay, perhaps overly simplistic.  But true, nonetheless.  As I ended last Sunday, I am happy with my "news".  And the sunshine.  

Good stuff.