As bookstore owners, we often get asked about our opinion on what will become of the printed book with the current shift to e-readers, apps, and digital books. While it is impossible for us (or anyone else for that matter) to predict what the near future holds, we do have a couple of things we would like to talk about.
Drew here - for this post I'm going to commit what will essentially be children's-book-sacrilege. I might have to resign from being a bookstore owner after this one, but please hear me out.
I've recently had a bit of a hate/love relationship with the classic children's book "Love You Forever" written by Robert Munsch and illustrated by Sheila McGraw. It has led me to some interesting thoughts regarding emotional connections to books, especially children's books.
As we've mentioned before, we believe strongly in reading to children as young as possible. Reading simple books to infants not only helps to develop their speech comprehension and visual acuity, but is also a great bonding experience.
Everyone is writing Valentine's Day themed posts this week and we are no exception. Being Kate's favourite holiday, we couldn't miss throwing our contribution on the pile as well!
We would like to quickly mention some of our favourite love-related books for little ones. If you are looking for something sweet to give to the child in your life that doesn't involve chocolate then look no further.
One of the best things about the book industry is that there are generally three to four "seasons" each year when new releases come out. As we are in February, we are smack dab in the middle of the Winter book season and there are amazing new books arriving in our store each week. We thought we'd take a moment to tell you about a few of the best picture books that have come out in the past couple of weeks.
Thursday January 27th is Family Literacy Day, a national awareness initiative which was created by ABC Life Literacy Canada in 1999 and held annually. This special day promotes the importance of reading and engaging in other literacy-related activities as a family. As bookstore owners and as parents, this cause is obviously very close to our hearts. Encouraging literacy in children is absolutely vital in ensuring that they succeed in their education and later careers and is a necessary component in the development of their imaginations.
Hopefully a regular feature on our blog, we would like to focus on particular children's book authors or illustrators that you may or may not have heard of before. For the inaugural "Spotlight on..." we would like to focus on the very talented Jessica Meserve!
When Kate was in University, she worked at a YMCA camp as a residential counselor during the summer break. She worked with children as young as five-years-old all the way up to fourteen-years-old. No matter what age they were, each night everyone got into their bunks and she read a short picture book or a few chapters from a novel to them. This "storytime" was often what calmed the nervous campers and created a routine that helped all of them feel at home and able to get some shut-eye (of course a little game of "who can be the quietest?" worked in special circumstances too).
Hello and welcome to our first blog post for the Yummy Mummy Club! We are parents of a beautiful two-year old daughter and the owners of an independent children's bookstore in Victoria BC called Tall Tales Books. In this blog, we will be sharing our stories and experiences with the balancing act that is our lives as booksellers, parents, and small business owners.
