At Magers & Quinn Booksellers, located in a 1922 building in the Uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis, retail manager Jessi Blackstock is looking forward to warmer weather, which lures the city’s residents and visitors outdoors – and into the bookstore.
Two books that are selling well pop immediately into my mind because they are favorites of my own children. My four-year-old daughter is very girly and princess-y, so we are a rather Fancy Nancy-obsessed family. The latest book in the series, Saturday Night Sleepover by Jane O’Connor and Robin Preiss Glasser, is very popular at our house right now. Even my two-year-old son, who is very into books with car and transportation themes, likes Fancy Nancy. In fact, my kids took it along to read on their first-ever sleepover at their grandparents’ without Mom and Dad. The story is about siblings taking care of each other, and is as good as the earlier books in the series. It’s a very popular handsell for me.
One of my son’s favorite books at the moment, and one I handsell like crazy because I think it’s really a great book, is McToad Mows Tiny Island by Tom Angleberger, illustrated by John Hendrix. It’s a silly little story, with attractive illustrations, and reading it, you can’t help but laugh. McToad and his mower travel by truck, train, helicopter, and boat to get to the tiny island. It’s actually a very easy handsell because people look at the funny cover and buy it right off the bat.
Another favorite picture book here is Wake Up Island by Mary Casanova, who is a Minnesota author, with wonderful illustrations by Nick Wroblewski. The book celebrates the beauty of Minnesota’s North Woods, and I recommend it to anyone who has a cabin Up North, since all Minnesotans love that area of the state – and we love our nature. This book is a beautiful celebration of nature, and a lovely book to put on a coffee table. You definitely don’t need children to have this picture book in your house.
In that same category is Timeline: A Visual History of Our World by Peter Goes, which is an oversized book that offers a visual history of the world with woodcut-style illustrations – and we do sell this category of book very well. Also along those lines that sell well for us are Animalium: Welcome to the Museum by Jenny Broom, illustrated by Katie Scott, a series that explores natural history and art; and the wonderful Maps series by Aleksandra Mizielinska and Daniel Mizielinski. Both series are published by Big Picture Press, and combine lots of historical information and lovely graphics.
In middle grade, Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman is very popular around here, and we’re looking forward to the paperback, which is coming out next month. Of course paperbacks do better for us in general, but we have sold this book well in hardcover. It’s a very fun story about a book-loving girl, and the people who come into our store tend to be real book lovers.
We’ve also done very well with The Marvels by Brian Selznick. I think the author’s name recognition plays a part in that. His books are not your average kind of book, but both the book and movie versions of The Invention of Hugo Cabret really broke the ice for him, and he has many fans. And we find a lot of adults read Selznick’s novels too.
In YA, I’m super excited about the A Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas. I can’t wait for the newest novel, A Court of Mist and Fury, coming out in May – and I know other staffers feel the same way. This is older YA fantasy, with a decent amount of mature content in it. It’s very well executed, with really satisfying adventure that pulls the reader in immediately.
And another favorite YA here, which is not as mature as Maas’s series, is The Girl from Everywhere, a new time-travel fantasy by Heidi Heilig, which puts an interesting, new-ish twist on time traveling. Readers really have to pay attention to the beautifully complicated plot, which is set in many locations across the world, and includes so many different elements, including mythology and legend. The ARC flew around the store when it arrived, and many staffers are enjoying it and having very good luck handselling it.
