Postcard from Children’s Institute
“If we don't believe children are worthy of real literature, then on some level we don't think children are real people.”
That was how superstar kids’ book writer Mac Barnett closed out Children’s Institute 2025, the yearly conference for bookstore people put on by the American Booksellers Association. I don’t usually cry at conferences, but this talk got me.
Barnett, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature (famous for books like Sam and Dave Dig a Hole and The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza) talked passionately about art-making and how kids think. Calling picture books "children's literature's greatest contribution to literature as a whole,” he explained–beautifully and profoundly–how those kinds of books work.
“It's not just words and pictures–it's theater," he said. "A little stage play you can carry around with you. And you–the adult who reads the book to the child–have been cast as every character."
Here’s where I confess that I barely knew who Mac Barnett was before this trip. My kids and I read a ton of books together, but they’re grownups now, and Barnett only began publishing in 2009. Part of why I wanted to go to Children’s Institute was to catch up on the kids’ book world. I had high expectations, but the conference exceeded them.
Some highlights:
I took a half-day bus tour of the bookstores of Portland, Oregon, from the tiny, sublime Green Bean Books to the enormous and incomparable Powell’s. Here are some treasures I picked up along the way.
I loved how Powell’s had a section not only for staff picks but for customer picks too.
Also at Powell’s, I was excited to spot a terrific new YA book by Philly local Julia Drake, Lovesick Falls, about three teenaged besties who face a summer of drama (as in theater) and drama (as in teenagers). Learn more about this one in the recommendations section below.
In the galley room, I picked up a ton of advance reading copies (ARCs) to ship home to consider stocking in our store.
The extraordinary library-joy librarian Mychal Threets gave a talk that also made everyone cry!
I browsed the vendor tables and got excited about some very cool books for small people by small presses.
In the morning, I got ready for the day at nearby Roseline Coffee. (See photo below of the dregs of an excellent cortado served in a pretty green glass.)
After detailed and exciting panels on “Children’s Bookselling 101,” "Young Teen Lit,” and “How to Do Yearly Inventory,” I was relieved to fall into a restful (yet informative) workshop called “Story Time and a Craft,” led by the brilliant and kind Heather Albinson from Wild Rumpus Books. Heather read us a story called Invisible Things and organized a craft for us in which we made a picture of an invisible thing.
Heather told us that just touching the pipe cleaners and felt balls would make us feel calmer, and she was right.
That night, I was invited to the HarperCollins author dinner in a Portland skyscraper and sat next to first Kerilynn Wilson (One Foggy Christmas Eve) and then Lian Cho (Oh, Olive!), getting to learn about their books and their artistic processes.
But back to Mac Barnett.
He talked about how the rhythm and compression of the language in picture books make them a kind of poetry.
He told us that, at dinner parties, someone will inevitably ask him, “Do you think you’ll ever write a real book?” The room groaned in sympathy.
Finally, he showed us an image of a proclamation he wrote, which many famous kids’ book writers signed. Imitation, laziness, and timidity are poisoning a great artform, it says. A picture book should be fresh, honest, piquant, and beautiful.
I left Children’s Institute energized and inspired. My goal is to make sure that every book we stock at Celia Bookshop–whether for children or adults–is fresh, honest, piquant, and beautiful.
Recommendations
In this edition of the newsletter, I’m recommending a literary novel, a YA novel, a mystery, and a very fun fantasy novel–more in the domestic witch mode than the dragon mode. As usual, I’ll take a look at each book’s first lines and ask what that opening might tell us about the pages to come.
So Far Gone
By Jess Walter
A prim girl stood still as a fencepost on Rhys Kinnick’s front porch. Next to her, a cowlicked boy shifted his weight from snow boot to snow boot. Both kids wore backpacks. On the stairs below them, a woman held an umbrella against the pattering rain.
It was the girl who’d knocked. Kinnick cracked the door. He rasped through the dirty screen: “Magazines or chocolate bars?”
The little girl, who looked to be about ten, squinted. “What did you say?”
Had he misspoken? How long since Kinnick had talked to anyone? “I said, what are you fine young capitalists selling? Magazines or chocolate bars?”
“We aren’t selling anything,” said the boy. He appeared to be about six. “We’re your grandchildren.”
I don’t usually quote this much of a book I’m recommending, but for Jess Walter’s terrific new novel I really wanted to get to that line where the boy says “We’re your grandchildren.” This whole opening is a pretty great set piece, showcasing Kinnick’s out-of-touch crankiness and making us feel how far he has disappeared from the world–which of course, this being a novel, he’s about to be dragged back into. By his grandchildren.
The retired newspaper man is disgruntled for the same reasons a lot of us are. After a fight with his affable but conspiracy-theory-credulous son-in-law, he takes off to live on a defunct sheep farm, taking the buildings apart in order to return the land to a more natural state. Then the kids show up. Kinnick is a great character—it’s hard not to root for him—and he’s only one of several. The book wanders back and forth, offering us chapters from the points of view of his daughter, his former girlfriend, his son-in-law, his granddaughter, and several other folks, each voice its own particular pleasure.
Let’s take just a moment to admire Walter’s first sentence: “A prim girl stood still as a fence post on Rhys Kinnick’s front porch.”
First of all, it just sounds nice–those repeated short i sounds (prim, girl) followed by the sibilants all lined up (stood, still, fence, post). The beginning of the sentence is a bunch of monosyllables (prim, girl, stood), after which the slightly longer Kinnick–crammed full of consonants–seems to rock and rollick a little. Can you hear the music of it?
Writers who care about language don’t always care about characters, let alone story. But Walter is a virtuouso of all three.
Lovesick Falls
By Julia Drake
Touchstone warned us a thousand times that the cabin was not very nice. It was old, for one thing, and not terribly spacious, for another. Persistently damp, with sluggish plumbing and a total lack of insulation, though hopefully that would be less of a problem in the summer. There was also the matter of his uncle’s ¹ unusual taste, plus the temperamental oven – cakes came out soupy in the middle, while roasted vegetables were blackened. Sometimes for seemingly no reason at all, the house would lose power for a few days, and everything would have to be done by candlelight.
Yes, there is a footnote in the first paragraph of Julia Drake’s delicious new YA novel about three friends who spend the summer in a small town where, legend has it, the spring water can make you fall out of love! I’m not reproducing the footnote here, but it charmingly introduces our main character’s friends as well as her favorite TV show, Power Jam, about Roller Derby, which plays an important and disarmingly funny role.
I love a story where three friends spend the summer in a cabin in the woods. Especially when–as in this case–there’s a summer theater for them to work in. A costume shop with an unfriendly cat! A fernery! A complex three-way dynamic among teenagers who have deep and contradictory feelings for each other!
This book is billed as YA LGBTQ Romance–and there is certainly romance here–but Drake nimbly colors outside the lines of the genre, creating a more complex and nuanced (you could say realistic) fictional world. You might guess who each of these kids will end up with at the end, but then again, you might not. More importantly, who each of them ends up with is not the point. The point is what their journey into the green world of Lovesick Falls helps them to understand about themselves, and love, and creativity, and how to care for the people around them.
Nightshade
By Michael Connelly
The marine layer was as thick as cotton and had formed a thousand-foot wall that shrouded the entrance to the harbor. The Adjourned was late and Stilwell waited for it in his John Deere Gator by the fuel dock behind the casino. The harbor was almost empty, the red-and-orange mooring balls floating free in lines across the glass surface. Stilwell knew that as soon as the layer burned off, the weekenders would start arriving. The harbormaster’s office had reported that it would be at full capacity for the first big weekend of summer. Stilwell was ready for it.
If the first paragraph of a book tells you that a character is ready for something, it’s a safe bet that they are not! That’s certainly true in the case of this Catalina Island police procedural by maestro of the genre Michael Connelly. The policeman here is not Connelly’s more famous Harry Bosch, or Mickey Haller,the Lincoln Lawyer, or (my favorite) Renée Ballard (start with The Late Show!) but a decent homicide cop exiled from LA to a sleepy island where everyone drives golf carts. Murder is not supposed to reach Catalina…but, you know.
Connolly’s style here is clear and solid with a lot of physical detail: red-and-orange mooring balls, the glass surface of the water, that thousand-foot wall of fog. Noticing the details is what good homicide cops do, and good writers too.
Nettle and Bone
By T. Kingfisher
The trees were full of crows and the woods were full of madmen. The pit was full of bones and her hands were full of wires.
What I like best about this opening to T. Kingfisher’s delightful fantasy novel is its offering of so many specific objects–crows and bones, woods and wire, pits and hands. They feel like a jumble of puzzle pieces spilled out on a table. How will all these things come together to make a story? How will they relate to each other and to the “her” who we’ll soon meet? I’m curious, and I want to keep reading to find out.
The plot of Nettle and Bone involves a princess named Marra, hidden away in a convent, who learns that her sister is suffering at the hand of a wicked prince husband. To save her sister, Marra assembles a group of companions including a practical dust-wife who can talk to the dead, a godmother who is not so great at giving blessings, a dog assembled from bones, and a disgraced knight rescued from the goblin market.
There are so many different kinds of fantasy novels–stories with dragons and court intrigue, with orcs and swords and coffee shops, with talking plants and secret spell books–and all of them are having a moment. At a time when the world feels so uncertain–when it feels as though we might all be tilting into a bone pit–the rules and order of genre fiction can be a balm.
T. Kingfisher writes in many different modes, but this book hits a sweet spot for me. Questions of pregnancy and childbirth, of how women are used as chess pieces, and what kinds of power can be born of determination, are all at play here. There is some real darkness, but Nettle and Bone is more interested in offering us pleasure than lingering in pain.
To receive this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here.