It's a non-fiction filled week here on ShelfTalker. We've so far done WHO? books, WHAT? books, and WHEN? books. Today is WHERE?, and I invite you to be creative with your answers to this one, as "where" does not, of course, have to be a physical place, nor does it have to be a place on Planet Earth if it is.

One of my (VERY new) favorite books that answers the question "WHERE?" is Brian Floca's forthcoming Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 (Atheneum, April 2009). The answer to &...Read More

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We're on Day 3 of a 7-day non-fiction stretch! Yesterday was "WHAT?" Monday was "WHO?" Today is "WHEN?" which means it's your turn to rave about your favorite non-fiction books about history. OR about the subject of time, I suppose. (Though I might call that "WHAT?" or "HOW?" or "HUNH?" because it's such a mind-bending concept. Read Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman if you know not of what I speak.)

Let me briefly remind you that tomorrow is WHERE? and Friday is HOW? and Saturday is WHATEVER! (m...Read More

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This is "Your Favorite Non-Fiction Week" here at ShelfTalker. Yesterday I asked you to tell the world what non-fiction books answering the question "WHO?" (i.e. biographies) are on your list of favorites. Today, I'm inviting you to tell the world about your favorite non-fiction books that answer the question "WHAT?" What is this, what is that, what are we made of, what are we doing, what is is all about? Tell me WHAT you are thinking!

Just to remind you of the themes still remaining this week (in case you've forgotten), tomorrow (Wednesday) = WHEN? Thursday = WHERE? Friday = HOW? Saturday = WHATEVER! (A non-fiction free-for-all.) And Sunday is HOLE DAY, when you tell the publishing world (plus the rest of us) what non-f...Read More

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Susan E. Goodman recently wrote a post for the I.N.K. (Interesting Non-Fiction for Kids) Blog in which she observed that in response to my "Build a Bookstore" posts last month, many of you (and I!) failed to include many non-fiction suggestions in our short lists of "must-have" titles for bookstores.

I think there are several possible reasons for this -- at least FOUR, which is the number I'll enumerate here. The first is the simple fact that I limited the number of titles you could recommend (just five each!), thereby limiting the possible slots that could be occupied by non-fiction. (Notice how much more ef...Read More

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Is your new year off to a good start? With a healthy breakfast? (If not, it doesn't bode well for that "eat better" resolution you made after a couple of beers on New Year's Eve.)

Gareth and I are big cereal eaters, for convenience sake, more than anything else. Perhaps that's why CEREAL (of all things) came to mind for me when Gareth and I were having a recent conversation about how he could best merchandise his graphic novels (both current and future). Imagine the fun of pouring yourself a bowl of Odyssey-O's every morning! I'm picturing little sticks of bran fused together to resemble wooden rafts with marshmallow sea monsters added to the mix. Yummm... classic goodness.

Apart from Count Chocula, which presumably owes its inspiration to Dracula, I can't think of any cereals with names derived from classic...Read More

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Gareth's and my search for an ideal wedding site found us at a woodsy site in New Hampshire last Sunday, enroute to Boston from Vermont. Because the place we were visiting sees relatively little action in the winter, both we and our tour guide were surprised to find that ANOTHER party had already made the rounds of the place earlier in the day. Their group, though, had made a very different impression on the place: a three-toed impression, to be more precise.

If I'd thought to put down a quarter or something to indicate scale you'd see that what appears above are the footprints of a rather large bird. At first glance we saw only one line of tracks and thought, maybe they'd been made by a heron. But no. Once we saw many, many more sets of tracks we realized that "heron" was probably not the answer to our "What le...Read More

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I wound up starting my holiday vacation earlier than originally planned, curtailing my available time for blogging, so I'm sorry if any of you were missing my missives last week. In order to avoid the nasty weather predicted for Wednesday, Gareth and I drove north to Montpelier, Vt., late Tuesday night, where we stayed until yesterday. While in town we made the usual rounds to our favorite Montpelier stops, which include Bear Pond Books, home of wonderfully creaky wooden floors, many a fabulous tome, and (among others) the always welcoming Jane Knight, the store's sweet and savvy children's book buyer.

During our brief store visit on Dec. 26th, I snapped a few photos of Bear Pond's ingenious Advent calendar-like window display (which we'd first seen during our visit to Montpeli...Read More

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I originally found this shirt on 80stees.com but it appears that they've no longer got it in stock. (Darn it!) It appears, though, that you can buy a white shirt sporting the same image + slogan at sweetnsourtees.com or teeshirtsrock.com.

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As in "in the black." As in "profitable." This is the hope of all retailers every year of course, but a lot of us are crossing even more fingers and toes than usual. And for those of us in the Boston area (and many other parts of the country, I hear), this past weekend was a serious optimism damper. It was the WEEKEND BEFORE CHRISTMAS, which should have spelled retail manna, but three consecutive days of terrible winter weather saw relatively few area cash registers ringing.

All of this is making me think for the umpteenth time of the holiday message sent out this year by Roy Blount Jr., president...Read More

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What do stem cell research and your holiday decorations have in common? Both could be improved with the help of a "retro" craft supply called Shrinky Dinks. I'll leave it to Wired Science to explain the medical advances made possible by this magical plastic toy while I explain here how you can make great little ornaments or wreath decorations (or pins or necklaces or earrings or... almost anything) sporting y...Read More

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My favorite holiday tradition in the Boston area is the annual screening of Frank Capra's brilliant It's a Wonderful Life at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge. I go every year that I can, usually accompanied by friends Lisa DiSarro (associate marketing director at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and Leo Landry (author/illustrator/bookseller/all-around-nice-guy), and IDEALLY by someone who's never seen the film before, so that the three of us can then have the joy of being the ones to introduce them to it.

In recent years, though, the name "Potter" which I once associated first and foremost with the evil miser of Capra's creat...Read More

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Once again I've perused the endless book-related offerings on Etsy for you and put together a post filled with suggestions for handcrafted gifts, many of them made with recycled materials. As always I've linked both to individual sellers' stores (click on the seller's name) AND to the items themselves (click on the photo). If you click on an item but find it's sold out, visit that seller's store to see if they've listed the item again or contact them to request that they do so. Many sellers have information on their store page about the likelihood of their being able to get these gifts to you before Christmas. (Time is obviously running out!)

Oiseaux sells wonderful personalized bookplates, featuring vintage children's book illustration...Read More

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