Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Buy a Book

I am continuing to explore black and white this summer and have spent the last couple of weeks working on editorial-type projects. I developed this pencil image for use on a flyer for a certain museum group conference with a focus on bridging cultures.

On an unrelated and far more important topic, has anyone else noticed a change in the inventory in the children's book section of the larger chain bookstores? I had a chance to be in both the Barnes and Noble down the street and the wonderful independent children's book store Whale of a Tale this week. B&N has definitely reduced their offerings and seems to be stocking up on oldies but goodies at the expense of a lot of amazing new books. I hadn't realized the extent of lack of great kids' lit at B&N until I saw at W-o-a-T what I had been missing. This raises all kinds of troubling questions - most of which I have no answers for. I've always been an equal opportunity book shopper: I patronize all kinds of booksellers, and I think B&N does a great job enticing customers (a good thing for the publishing industry). But I know I've got to make a greater effort at supporting the independent stores. Without them, all these fabulous books that B&N doesn't carry will . . . disappear.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Patricia, I was just in Borders yesterday. The Children and YA sections are places that I check out regularly. They seem to have a nice variety. I have not been to any independent stores lately. (there just aren't any locally.) Some chain stores seem to be competing online with Amazon. I know for a fact that many books are not readily available at Borders stores; they're available for purchase by order online only.
I find this frustrating for many reasons. I really want to hold a book and turn the pages myself. I love to read books to children. I like to see how children interact with books. Use of digital materials will destroy this interaction. Not everyone agrees, though. There are those who are worried about paper consumption.
They want to encourage the use of the internet for electronic books.
I worry about the future of literacy and publishing.

Olga Levitskiy said...

Your drawing is beautiful !

Anonymous said...

wow i love this drawing the idea of it is very clever