You can buy your ticket at The Cedars today at 5:00. We are not going to reserve any more tickets. We have plenty of tickets. Just get one when you get to The Cedars. (If you’re going to be by Lemuria you are welcome to purchase it in person.)

Tuesday March 27, 2012, Lemuria Books, Fondren Renaissance Foundation, Mississippi Children’s Museum, Jackson Zoo, Brown Bottling Company, Trustmark, and Random House Children’s Books are hosting the “Passport to Adventure! A Magic Tree House Live Reading Tour” at The Cedars. The event starts at 5:00 and the live play starts at 6:00.

Tickets are $10 and are redeemable (only at the event) for one paperback book and one snack. One ticket per child plus adult escort.

So what all is going on, you may ask? Let me give you the rundown:

First off, let me suggest that everyone bring a blanket. The show will be in the backyard of The Cedars, with the back porch as the stage.

When you get there at 5:00, redeem your ticket for a book from Lemuria’s table and a snack from the Brown Bottling table and have your adult escort stake out a place for your blanket. Parents, seating/blanket set-up is on a first come, first serve basis, but have no fear, everyone will be able to see.

After you have secured a seat, gulp down your snack and them head out to the front yard where the Mississippi Children’s Museum will have their Imagination Playground set up. Build your own Magic Tree House! Check out the awesome Magic Tree House bus parked out front along the way.

Then head to the backyard to see the folks from the Jackson Zoo and go on your own adventure, right in The Cedars backyard, just like Jack and Annie. The Zoo will be bringing animals out so that people can get an up close encounter with them.

Around 5:30 we will have Magic Tree House Trivia and give a way a few free things, so kids, brush up on your Magic Tree House books!

Then at 6:00, your favorite chapter book characters, Jack and Annie, will take the stage to tell us about themselves and their adventures!

The Passport to Adventure! A Magic Tree House Live Reading Tour is a national tour, sponsored by Random House Children’s Books, that brings Jack and Annie live and in-person to meet their fans.

Jack and Annie will roll into 15 cities across the United States aboard the “Magic Tree House Express”. Fans will enjoy Jack and Annie’s magical traveling adventures through a live, theatrical performance with songs based on the bestselling Magic Tree House series. After the show, stick around for an official Jack and Annie “book stamping.”

We are so excited to really make this a Fondren community event, and one that I think you will not want to miss.

You can buy your ticket at The Cedars today at 5:00. We are not going to reserve any more tickets. We have plenty of tickets. Just get one when you get to The Cedars. (If you’re going to be by Lemuria you are welcome to purchase it in person.)

The Cedars Address:
4145 Old Canton Road
Jackson, MS 39216
(Across the street from St. Andrew’s Lower School)

On a glorious snow day a couple of years ago, I devoured the first Hex Hall book and immediately fell in love with Sophie and her world. A mix of Percy Jackson and Libba Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rachel Hawkins has created a fresh and original series that my Book Owls Book club and I devoured it last year.

In Hex Hall, we meet Sophie, a 15 year old witch, who was born to a warlock dad and human mom. She has lived a pretty normal life with her mom up until the night she tries to help a friend at prom with a love spell that goes horribly wrong. Her dad sentences her to Hecate Hall (fondly nicknamed Hex Hall), a school for witches, shapeshifters, and fairies who have threatened their kind by showing their magic to humans. Bored and angry, she is determined not to like Hex Hall, but everything is not as it seems at Hex Hall, or in Sophie’s life.

This year, the final book in this trilogy has been released and I have already talked to several people who have run in here to get the conclusion to this series, Spell Bound.

If you have already loved this series, or are just now hearing about it, come meet the author, Rachel Hawkins, on Monday, March 26th at 4:00. But be forewarned–There will be spoilers.

We hope to see you there!

We all know the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar: On Sunday he hatched and was quite hungry. He eats his way through the days of the weeks and Eric Carle beautifully drawn fruits and desserts and at the end of his food journey, he is quite full and quite tired. He builds himself a cocoon, rests and emerges as a beautiful butterfly.

Brilliantly innovative designer and artist Eric Carle has dramatized the story of one of Nature’s commonest yet loveliest marvels, the metamorphosis of the butterfly, in a picture book to delight as well as instruct the very youngest reader or listener. Cleverly die-cut pages show what the caterpillar ate on successive days, graphically introducing sets of up to 10 objects and also the names of the days of the week in rotation, as well as telling the central story of the transformation of the caterpillar.

Originally published in 1969, The Very Hungry Caterpillar‘s striking, colorful pictures, with it’s simple text in large, clear type have become a perennial favorite, not just at Lemuria, but in homes around the world. As I have been writing this blog, just about everyone here has shared a story about this book from their childhood, or their child’s early years.

Very Hungry Caterpillar day is March 20 every year, and in celebration of this great book, we will be hosting our own Very Hungry Caterpillar Celebration on Thursday, March 22nd at 10:00 in our dot com building (to the left of Banner Hall.) We plan on having activities for the kids and a bookstore employee will be dressed in a Very Hungry Caterpillar costume to add to the entertainment. The event is open to the public, and we hope that you will join us!

Tomorrow I’ll be participating in a discussion with three other booksellers from Mississippi on the future of bookselling at the University of Mississippi. My thoughts on this subject have been constant over the last few years which became more emphasized by the recession. I’m constantly reading and analyzing how to stay open and grow. I’m challenging my old ways, hoping to find new ways to enhance my work and improve Lemuria. As I prepare my thoughts for this session, I’ve decided to reflect on One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of amazon.com.

One Click begins on page one with comments about Richard Howorth, my long time favorite bookseller of Square Books. Richard’s fanatic focus on customer service and his drive to go the extra mile is the emphasis. On September 22, 1994, Richard instructed Bezos about bookselling at the American Bookseller Association’s bookselling school for wanna-be book people. Richard came away with the feeling that Jeff would be successful.

Years later, a realization came  to Richard when he recognized Jeff at an annual trade show, not understanding until then that he had helped train the Godfather of Amazon.

One Click is a concise presentation of the evolution of Amazon. Being very clear about Jeff’s background, a true original, you can begin to understand how the pieces of the puzzle fit together for this driven, brilliant, creative, and narcissistic individual. One Click is essential for any bookseller who wants to understand his or her most competitive foe.

One Click gives the reader a timeline of how Amazon rose from the ground up. By the way, I do respect the hard work Jeff put for over 20 years. However, what I found most interesting was tracking his business timeline during the same years as Lemuria.

Between Amazon’s initial stock offering in 1996 and the end of 2010, Barnes and Noble stock had dropped 29% while Borders stock had fallen 96%. Amazon’s stock had risen 10,320%, all based on end of year 2010. Barnes and Noble was worth $852 million, Borders $65 million and Amazon $81 billion.

Today, physical book readers and bookstores are seriously challenged by the e-book growth. Some people still love their prime time reading experience of real books and enjoy leisurely making their choices at their favorite bookstores.

But not Bezos. He seems ready to kill the industry that made him rich. From Jeff:

“‘I’m grumpy when I’m forced to read a physical book because it’s not convenient,’ he complains. ‘Turning the pages . . . the book is always flopping itself shut at the wrong moment . . . The Kindle is simply a better form of book.. . . We have to build something better than a physical book.'” (135)

For our future, booksellers need to remember Richard Howorth’s advice about dedication to customer service. I feel that Bezos considers the strength of e-book customer service to be the immediate gratification of instant reward through an e-book purchase anywhere in the world.

Real booksellers offer experience and the desire to help readers find their right read. They want to enhance the selection process with a friendly place housing a well edited inventory. Most importantly, they want to make book selections a human experience that is satisfying. That’s my idea of customer service which thus gives me the fulfillment of my bookseller goals.

Above: Newbery winner Christopher Paul Curtis talking about his new book Mighty Miss Malone.

At this time, predicting the future of bookselling is difficult. No one in the industry seems to have a clear answer.

At the present, I  see it as a battle between the publishers and Amazon as to who will be in charge in three to five years. I think Amazon will dominate Barnes and Noble and I hope they don’t beat Lemuria. The key, the way I see it, is how much the publishers will strive to practice good customer service to us, their bookselling customers. I believe Amazon wants to control the publishers and the author guidelines. Bezos wants to rule all bookselling. I don’t think he cares a hoot in hell about the future of the real book or the bookselling experience or brick and mortar bookstores. Who will win remains to be seen.

*     *      *

One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of amazon.com

by Richard L. Brandt (Portfolio/Penguin, October 2011)

Another essential read for understanding the future of bookselling:

The New Rules of Retail by Robin Lewis and Michael Dart.

Read about it here.

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Lemuria’s Bookstore Keys Series on the Changing Book Industry

Where will e-book sales level out? (June 2) Indie Bookstores Buying from Amazon? (June 1) BEA Roundup (May 19) Lemuria’s Headed for NYC (May17) Barnes & Noble Bankrupt? (April 28) Decluttering the Book Market: Ads on the latest Kindle (April 14) Independents on the Exposed End of the Titantic? (April 6th) Border’s Bonuses (March 30) The Experience of Holding a Book (March15) Finding “Deep Time” in a Bookstore (March 8th) Reading The New Rules of Retail by Lewis & Dart (March 3) The Future Price of the Physical Book (Feb 18) Borders Declares Bankruptcy (Feb 16) How Great Things Happen at Lemuria (Feb 8th) The Jackson Area Book Market (Jan 25) What’s in Store for Local Bookselling Markets? (Jan 18) Selling Books Is a People Business (Jan 14) A Shift in Southern Bookselling? (Jan 13) The Changing Book Industry (Jan 11)

From the Nashville Scene: William Gay, the Hohenwald native who late in life earned a following as one of the most acclaimed Southern writers of recent years, was reportedly found dead last night from heart failure at his Lewis County home. He was 68. Read more here.

William Gay was a long time friend of Lemuria. Three of his novels were picked for First Editions Club: Long Home (1999), Provinces of Night (2000), and Twilight (2006).

I have written about my excursions out in the community before  and I am still here to tell you it is my FAVORITE part of my job here at Lemuria.  Yes, yes, I still love it when you come in the store and we can have great conversations about books and I can help you find your next read but it is a lot of fun coming to you and seeing you out and about.

I want to tell you about the collaboration that Lemuria and Millsaps College has started up.  Lemuria has always been involved with the Millsaps Arts & Lecture Series but now we have expanded to help out with the Friday Forum Series and the Visiting Writers Series.

Charles Baxter was the first author of the series and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing him again.  He walked up with Suzanne Marrs, who promptly introduced us, but I reminded him we had met before.  He had done an event at Lemuria for his novel, Feast of Love, about 12 years ago.  He quickly smiled and remembered that he had done his reading in a bar. (For those who don’t know, Lemuria and Musiquarium worked together for Literary Brews.)

Students, Professors and Jacksonians began swarming in the auditorium and the program began.  Baxter read a unpublished story, “Loyalty,” and laughter ensued.  One suggestion that he made to writers in the crowd was “never throw anything away.”  He then told us that the first 8 pages of this story he had written 16 years ago and recently found it in a old notebook he was looking through.  I found that to be very interesting and passed it along to Ellis, an aspiring writer on staff at Lemuria.  You couldn’t have asked for a better Wednesday afternoon and I hope that you will start taking advantage of these great programs.

All of these events are open to the public, some are free and some are ticketed events. They are all fantastic and there are a lot of people working together to bring them to you.

Lemuria is thrilled to be a part of World Book Night this year. Read on for details about how to get involved.

From World Book Night. org

We have a goal of getting 50,000 people to go out to places in their communities on the evening of Monday, April 23, 2012, and give a book to a stranger or to people you might know but believe aren’t frequent readers.

We ask that you go to a coffee shop or hospital, church or community center, an after-work party or train home, shopping mall or local school — and give out 20 free paperbacks. 

The goal is to give books to new readers, to encourage reading, to share your passion for a great book. The entire publishing, bookstore, library, author, printing, and paper community is behind this effort with donated services and time.

The first World Book Night was held in the UK last year, and it was such a big success that it’s spreading around the world! Please volunteer to be a book giver in the U.S. Sign up now to be a book giver–the deadline has been extended to Monday, Feb 6th!

Book Givers will have gatherings, large and small, across the U.S. to get ready to give books and to celebrate afterwards. As April 23rd nears, local and major media outlets will provide coverage from WBN 2012. The video below shows highlights of the World Book Night Celebration 2011 in London:

These paperbacks are specially-produced, not-for-resale World Book Night U.S. editions, and there are 30 titles for you to choose from. See a list of the books here.

A million free books in all!

You will be notified in early February if you have been chosen to be a book giver and which of the three books we are able to provide you with. You will then choose at which local bookstore or library you’d like to pick up your box of books ahead of World Book Night. (Lemuria will be a pick-up site in Jackson.)

And afterwards, we’d love you to share your book giving experience with us, as we get ready for the next year!

Lastly, we intend to promote reading year-round, not just one night, and we especially hope that you can continue to support bookstores and libraries. In these times, they need your support more than ever.

Click here to apply to be a Book Giver on April 23, 2012.