quote for the day

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. ~Anna Quindlen, "Enough Bookshelves," New York Times, 7 August 1991

I've got a 50% success rate on this....

catalog update

Jeez, it's been such a long time since I've compiled a hard copy catalog that I've seriously underestimated the time it takes. It doesn't help that I've got a new (COLOR!) printer/copier that I'm learning to use so it's going to be an illustrated catalog.

So, the January 2009 catalog is currently over 500 items and is going to cover award winners, (Newbury, Caldecott, King, Edgar etc) and whatever other book that I think is cool. Hopefully it will be completed by mid February at the latest.


Compiling is the easy part, it's the editing that's going to take the time.

Mini rant

I was in the local Borders bookstore this weekend looking at the new childrens picture books, just generally checking out what's new and what looks interesting, and I was struck again by the degradation in the childrens picture book section. This has been going on for a few years now but it has been especially bad over the last year, the picture book section has been shrunk by more than half it's original size and even more disappointing, a wall that at one time was dedicated to books is now "activity sets" and toys.

It's bad enough that I don't have an independent bookstore to shop at, but when the "big box" stores don't stock a decent collection it just flat ticks me off.

Award Announcement

The 2009 award announcement for the Newbery and Caledecott medals will be on January 26th this year. The announcements will be webcast at 7:45am from Denver during the ALA mid-winter meeting.

A whole slew of other literary awards for childrens and young adult books will also be announced. I also follow the Printz award for young adult and the Coretta Scott King for African American titles.