The September 11 disaster at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon has been upsetting to all Americans, certainly, but particularly upsetting to children. Many parents are having a difficult time explaining to their kids what happened and why, while trying to make sense of it for themselves. Around the country they have been turning to children's bookstores as both a source of information and a source of comfort. For their part, publishers have been busy organizing their responses, while rearranging tour schedules and looking to acquire or reprint pertinent titles.
The perception may be that retail book business has been sluggish since the disaster, but on the children's side, many stores have been reporting brisk sales. 
For Anne Ginkel, owner of Hobbit Hall in Roswell, Ga., traffic was extremely light for the first few days, but by the weekend the store was doing "incredible" business. "All of our story times have been full," she says. "I think parents felt a need to take their children away from the TV. A lot of our clients are parents of young children, and I think they felt like life needed to get going again, and they were looking for good picture books and fun things to do with their kids. Now business is back to what it was like at this time last year."
At A Likely Story, located in the Virginia suburb of Alexandria, where many Pentagon workers live, manager Sheilah Egan says that she went ahead and held a story time on September 11, "like I do every Tuesday morning. Five people came in because they couldn't be by themselves, watching the horrible images on TV. They needed to be someplace with other people. Five nannies also came in because they needed someplace to go and talk about it. Business was extremely slow that day, but the next day, when schools were closed, parents brought their kids in and business was quite good. Some parents were not allowing their kids to watch TV during the time when all news was on, and so they were buying books for their kids to read instead."
Though Chicago was not the target of any attacks, several buildings were evacuated there, including the high-rise in which children's bookstore Children in Paradise is located. "In the days just after September 11," says co-owner Sarah Wood-Prince, "we didn't have a lot of customers, but the people who came in were buying stacks of books. You could tell they were looking for an alternative to what was going on."
Judy Christiensen, manager of Imagine That! in Riverside, Calif., says, "We've been very busy. I think people want to be out of their houses, away from the TV." The same thing was true for Judy Geck of Ruminator Books in St. Paul, Minn. "I think at first everyone was glued to their TVs and reading newspapers," she says. "Now people are looking for information."
And What's in Demand?
For Egan at A Likely Story, "People want nonthreatening, cheery books for children who can sense that something is wrong. Some children's fathers died in the attack on the Pentagon, and we have had people come in looking for picture books that don't have father figures in them, or that don't have humans in them at all. Animal books have been popular."
Egan also comments, "People are also asking for children's books on grieving, loss and coping, and adult books that will help them explain bad people. Parents are looking for "What is death?" books, and I've recommended When Dinosaurs Die [by Laurie Krasny Brown and Marc Brown], What's Heaven? by Maria Shriver and The Next Place [by Warren Hanson]. We've had requests, mostly from schools, for books about different cultures. We also have a display about different religions."
Bookseller Beth Puffer, manager of Bank Street College Bookstore in New York City, reports, "We immediately sold out of One April Morning [by Nancy Lamb, illus. by Floyd Cooper], about the Oklahoma City bombing, and A Terrible Thing Happened [by Margaret Holmes, illus. by Cary Pillo], which helps young children understand trauma and violence. We've been looking for books on Islam, and on Afghanistan, but there isn't anything we've found yet [on Afghanistan]."
Puffer has also found that teachers and parents are seeking out books on tolerance, diversity and Middle Eastern culture. Among the books she's been recommending: The Araboolies of Liberty Street by Sam Swope, illus. by Barry Root; The Hundredth Name by Shulamith Levey Oppenheim, illus. by Michael Hays; and The Day of Ahmed's Secret by Florence Parry Heide and Judith Heide Gilliland, illus. by Ted Lewin. "Teachers have told us that they want to expose their kids to that information," Puffer says, "so that the children will not be swayed by opinions they may hear from others."
At Imagine That!, Christiensen says, "We've sold a lot of A Is for America [by Devin Scillian, illus. by Pam Carroll]. We've sold out of all our fireman books, including A Day in the Life of a Firefighter [by Linda Hayward] and Fire! Fire! by Gail Gibbons. Teachers who have come in have been interested in books about American symbols, like The Flag We Love [by Pam Muñoz Ryan, illus. by Ralph Masiello], and we've done a display of patriotic books."
In Geck's community, as in others around the country, people have held gatherings to voice concern about the impending American military reaction. "What I want to do right now as a bookseller," Geck says, "is educate people about our role in the world and about nonviolent solutions to the situation. Our store has a long history of ties with Macalester College, and they've been holding nonviolence demonstrations, and many of our customers have those same views and want our government to explore diplomatic possibilities. We're trying to come up with books that teach tolerance and nonviolence, like Why? by Nikolai Popov; The War by Anais Vaugelabe; The Butter Battle Book by Dr. Seuss; Prejudice: A Story Collection [edited by Daphne Muse]; and Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes [by Eleanor Coerr, illus. by Ronald Himler]. And this is a chance for people to learn why this country is the envy of the world and yet so hated."
Another category of books that Puffer is selling well is picture books that are more about comfort than bibliotherapy. "We're finding that children want to hear stories of reassurance and resilience," she says. "They want to know that bad things can happen and that they'll still be okay, and their loved ones will still be okay. The Tub People [by Pam Conrad, illus. by Richard Egielski] is one of the picture books we've been recommending in that vein. Children need to understand that human beings are resilient and that they can recover from something terrible."
Children's booksellers offer mixed predictions for the fall selling season. As Egan at A Likely Story observes, "With school trips being canceled, I am not necessarily optimistic about the fall, and I am nervous going into the holidays. That said, though, I think that people still think of books as a priority for gift-giving, and so this season may not be stellar but I think it will still be strong."
Geck at Ruminator Books predicts that sales of some types of books will increase--history, books about world events and nonviolence--"as people try to move forward." She also foresees a possible trend of "people buying more light, fun reads, getting away from the heavier, issue-oriented novels. I think parents will be trying to find good, fun books for their kids."
Children's Publishers Respond
By and large, children's publishers, many of whose offices are in New York City, are back on their feet. Almost all large houses have reported changes to or cancellations of fall author tours. 
Most immediately affected by the disaster were the fall regional bookseller shows, especially the Pacific Northwest and Mountains and Plains shows, both of which took place the weekend following the disaster. Many authors who were scheduled to travel by plane to those shows had to cancel, both because air traffic was severely curtailed and also because of their own reluctance to fly and/or leave their families.
Publishers report that author appearances planned for the days right after September 11 were canceled, but that most tours would be resuming. According to Kia Neri, author promotions coordinator at Harcourt Children's Books, "Authors are willing to travel, in general, but in many cases they would now like to take the train." One of their authors, Deborah Wiles, made it to SEBA after much rearranging with Harcourt's travel department, and found herself thanked repeatedly by booksellers for attending. However, a tour of the Southwest by the U.K. author/artist team of Joyce Dunbar and Debi Gliori, for their new Tell Me What It's Like to Be Big, had to be canceled; their previous collaboration, Tell Me Something Happy Before I Go to Sleep, was reportedly selling well in the aftermath of the disaster, recommended by booksellers as comforting fare.
Other canceled fall tours include Sharon Creech and Walter Dean Myers for HarperCollins, Denise Fleming for Holt, Graham Salisbury for Delacorte and William Nicholson for Hyperion (both rescheduled for spring), and Brian Selznick for Scholastic. A tour for Putnam author Jan Brett was "reconstituted," says PPI director of special projects Tim Moses, so that Brett could visit stores within driving distance of her home. T.A. Barron's tour for Tree Girl and Gloria Pinkney's tour for In the Forest of Your Remembrance were canceled, and Kathleen Norris will not be accompanying Tomie dePaola on his tour for The Holy Twins (the first part of that tour was canceled, but dePaola is traveling by train to the remaining appearances). Richard Peck will still tour, but he will be driving and taking trains. As PPI children's publicity director Katrina Weidknecht points out, "In addition to any thoughts of safety risks, I think that the chaos caused by canceled flights and delays during a tightly packed schedule is a very strong consideration when deciding what we can and cannot do."
The first half of Graeme Base's tour for The Water Hole was canceled, but Base will eventually visit all but two of the originally planned stores, says Abrams children's publicity director Amy Corley. Base will travel to the U.S. from his home in Australia in November and will tour for a month. "We even added a few cities to the schedule," Corley reports.
Deb Shapiro at Clarion Books, asked if any of her house's authors had expressed reluctance to travels, replies, "No, in fact it's just the opposite. A couple of our authors feel very strongly about going forward with their plans, believing that scaling back or canceling would be allowing the terrorists to, in effect, win."
Other publishers report that no changes have been made in tour schedules. "Fortunately, a lot of our events are either happening in November or are local events so that authors can drive," says Stephanie McLaughlin at Houghton Mifflin. At Candlewick, too: "We haven't had any major changes," according to Susan Hershberg. "Author tours and events are happening as scheduled. This includes travel for our authors who live outside the U.S." Witch Child author Celia Rees is still scheduled to come from England this month to appear at two regionals, the Southern Festival of Books as well as several bookstore and library events. Little, Brown, which canceled Todd Parr's appearance at Mountains and Plains, is going ahead with a tour for Mary Ann Hoberman, and Cirque Du Freak author Darren Shan will be arriving from Ireland later this month for a bookstore tour. Also arriving from the U.K. this week is The Seeing Stone author Kevin Crossley-Holland, embarking on a five-city tour for Scholastic.
Several authors who were scheduled to make national media appearances (mainly morning talk shows) right after the disaster had those appearances canceled, including John Lithgow, Jane Goodall, Brian Selznick, Janet Schulman, Laura Numeroff and Robie Harris; several of these dates, when they could be, have been rescheduled.
Several children's organizations looked for ways to be of help, mostly in terms of compiling lists of titles that parents and teachers could use with children, to help explain or simply comfort them after the disaster. Among the organizations that quickly posted lists on their Web sites: the Children's Book Council, at www.cbcbooks.org; The Loose Leaf Book Company, at www.looseleaf.org; and the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, at www.scbwi.org.
An ad hoc committee of executives from various publishing houses has been formed to organize a unified response to the disaster. "All of us were at our individual desks, saying, 'What can we do? What can we do?,' says Brenda Bowen, a committee member and S&S executive v-p, publisher of hardcover and paperback books, "and Marc Aronson [of Cricket Books] started calling people. We had our first meeting and discovered that we all wanted to publish in different ways and eventually decided not to collaborate on a book, but rather to join forces to promote the idea of reading together."
In addition to that national campaign, which will officially launch next month (the group is currently looking for a spokesperson), the committee is donating books through the Children's Aid Society and is planning an art auction to raise money. Further announcements will be made when plans firm up.
In addition, Aronson reports that next year, on the anniversary of the disaster, he will publish a book at Cricket for readers ages 11 14, organized around the theme of "help": stories about people who helped out as well as readers' need for help in understanding what happened. The volume, tentatively called 911, will feature essays, poetry and drawings from such authors and artists as Katherine Paterson, Chris Raschka, Sharon Creech, Avi and many others, all of whom will be donating their efforts; $3 from each book sold will be given to charity.
North-South's SeaStar Books imprint is offering a chapter of one of its forthcoming titles as an e-book, available immediately. Bad Stuff in the News: A Family Guide to Handling the Headlines by Rabbi Marc Gellman and Monsignor Thomas Hartman is scheduled for publication in February and was originally conceived in response to the shootings at Columbine High School, but the authors have written a new chapter to address terrorism. SeaStar will offer the chapter free of charge to all of its accounts, and will also post the chapter on a number of educational and consumer Web sites; including www.kids read.com, www.bigchalk.com and www.readingonline.org. SeaStar says that accounts are also welcome to distribute printouts of the chapter.
Few "instant books" have been announced to date. Scholastic is now offering three paperbacks to the trade: America the Beautiful (a new title), and The Pledge of Allegiance and We Dream of a World (both previously available in the clubs). Gallopade International has announced the instant publication of The Day That Was Different: September 11, 2001 When Terrorists Attacked America by Carole Marsh, a collection of 20 reproducible activities for children that includes "A Timeline of Significant Events," "What Is the World Trade Center?," "What Is Islam?" and "What Will America Do Next?" Groundwood Books rushed into print a paperback reprint of an April 2001 novel, The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis, about a girl and her family living in war-torn Kabul.
September 11 was the laydown date for a few high-profile books, one from Scholastic and one from Delacorte, and neither publisher reports problems due to the unfortunate timing. According to Scholastic publicity director Kris Moran, the laydown of the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban paperback (with a first printing of 2.5 million copies) was not affected, "because all of that was planned ahead of time and books were already out." However, sell-through numbers have proved "softer than expectations, " she says, though the book is still "performing extremely well."
Judith Haut, v-p, executive director of publicity at Random House Children's Books, also reports smooth delivery of a fall novel, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares, which also had a September 11 laydown date (with 40,000 copies shipped). "It went out with no hitches," she says. "We've been pleased with its performance and so far the sales have been strong."
Publishers are also seeing sales spikes for particular books that have been selling well since the disaster. Little, Brown is going back to press on My New York, a 1993 picture book by Kathy Jakobsen that celebrates the city from a child's perspective; proceeds from the book will be donated to the September 11th Fund. Aladdin Paperbacks has gone back to press on George W. Bush: A Biography of Our 43rd President, published as an instant book and an e-book when the election winner was declared last December. An update on recent events and the text of Bush's September 20 speech to Congress has been included; the revised edition is expected to ship by early November.
Clarion Books received an order from one account for 5,000 copies of Sami and the Time of Trouble by Florence Parry Heide and Judith Heide Gilliland, along with requests for author interviews. And a backlist title for Houghton Mifflin, Faithful Elephants by Yukio Tsuchiya, has been selling strongly in paperback.
A March 2002 picture book from Knopf, Lisa in New York by Anne Gutman, illustrated by Georg Hallensleben, has caught the attention of booksellers as reps are beginning to sell the list, because the book's cover depicts the title character, her red scarf blowing in the wind, against the New York skyline including the twin towers. In an e-mail sent to sales reps, explaining the decision to keep the cover illustration intact, the book's editor, Janet Schulman, wrote, "We have discussed it here and unanimously concur that the twin towers are part of our history and they are not going to disappear from the images that represent New York and the U.S.A. for many, many years. We loved this cover before and we love it even more now. For us it is a treasure and a remembrance."
In these times, children's booksellers and publishers have a special role to play in helping parents and children come together. As Ginkel at Hobbit Hall puts it, "We have seen, more clearly over the past few weeks, that the family is still the integrating institution in this country." She speculates, too, that spending time with children and reading to them must be a psychological relief for adults right now. "It's got to be cathartic to be able to be with children, in a warm, fuzzy atmosphere," she says. "I'm seeing a sense of family and an awareness of its importance." It is a shared awareness, one that is proving inspirational to her fellow booksellers, to publishers, and to all of us in the children's book community.
