Catching her breath after the summer vacation scramble, settling into a new and larger location, and gearing up for the fall book fair season, Stephanie Steinly, owner of Harleysville Books in Harleysville, Pa., shared word of books that are moving briskly in her store.
We’ve had really good luck with Between Worlds by Skip Brittenham, which we’re handselling well. It’s a fantasy adventure featuring AR technology that entails downloading an app that literally brings the story to life. We dedicated a display to it, and Penguin made a video available on social media showing how the technology works, so there seems to be quite a bit of buzz building about the book. We’re having an event here in November and will encourage kids to experiment with the technology while they’re here. It’s such an interesting and revolutionary project – I’ve never seen anything like it.
On the picture book scene, we’re having really good luck with Who Wants Broccoli? by Val Jones. It’s a fantastic story about a shelter dog who thinks that people looking to adopt a pet want to see him do great tricks, like flip his water bowl into the air, which of course they don’t! It has a great message for kids about being happy in your own skin and being happy with who you are, and we’ve been able to handsell the book like crazy – everything about it is an easy sell. We’re hosting the author next Saturday at a story time coinciding with a dog show being held by an upscale pet supply store located in the same shopping center as our store.
Another picture book that is selling very well for us is Please, Open This Book! by Adam Lehrhaupt and Matthew Forsythe, a follow-up to Warning, Don’t Open This Book! It’s really fun and goofy – I’d put it in the same category as The Book with No Pictures by B.J. Novak – but of course this book has pictures. We’ve been fortunate to schedule Adam for visits to local schools, and it’s so funny to see how the kids interact with the book – they often want to yell back at it! We’ve used this at multiple story times and it’s always a favorite.
In middle grade, I love Cassie Beasley’s Circus Mirandus, which is selling like wildfire in both hardcover and paperback. In fact the paperback just came out, and has a new cover that shares more of the book’s fantasy aspects. It’s a wonderful story about a man who is raising his grandson and wants to cash in the magic, wish-granting ticket he got as a child at a circus. It is a great fantasy story with terrific read-aloud potential, and we’re planning on making it a focus of our fall book fairs.
And we’ve also been doing really well with the young reader adaptation of The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown. People are often lost when it comes to finding good nonfiction for kids. They want something that kids will enjoy but that is also worthwhile. Kids seem to like nonfiction that has more of a narrative to it than straight biographies, and this book offers all that.
