A couple of months back I posted a video about New York's street booksellers. Now I bring you a 3 1/2 minute video of the king of street booksellers.His "shop" is in Chennai, India. He has been there for 60 years and I am not sure if he's ever left. "This is my business for life I know no other" he says.He goes on:"The government doesn't want to help us. Government wants people to remain ignorant. If people started to read they might vote for others so the government gives no importance to education."Now that's street smarts.
Maurice Sendak’s First Pop-Up Book
Harry Potter isn't the only thing Scholastic is doing right. Late last year they published the first pop-up book illustrated by Maurice Sendak. Mommy! was a collaboration between Sendak, author Arthur Yorinks and the noted paper engineer Matthew Reinhart. The book's beginnings can be traced to a play written and directed by Arthur Yorinks called It's Alive for the Night Kitchen Radio Theater Company (which was founded by Yorinks and Sendak). The story is about a baby's search for his mother in a haunted house. "Unlike a traditional picture book, a pop-up book requires that a great deal more original...
Two Grande Dames of Bookselling Hit the Stage
Update: Stephen Wells has a review of the play in the New York Times ; Two Women, Rare Books: A Small, Literate Musical. He calls it a "promising new musical being given its first breath of life at the New Jersey Repertory Company."One of the unanswered questions in his mind with the play was the sexual orientation of Rostenberg and Stern. It was clear that they were soul mates but unclear if they were lovers."It is fine if they are not lovers, but that needs to be made clear, and then certain questions need to be answered. Are they asexual?...
An Issue Point With The Harry Potter Book: Some Copies Missing Pages
At least 200 people across the country who bought "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" over the weekend received copies that "have printing errors that include missing pages." 30pp. to be exact in one copy.The Seattle PI reports at least three of the QFC supermarkets in the Puget Soundreported trouble with Harry. "Printing and distributing 12 million copies of a book is a Herculean task, and it is not surprising at all that some would have printing errors," Scholastic said in a statement Monday morning.If you have one of these copies do not return it or exchange it just buy...
Eco-Libris: A Green Light in a Dark Sky
An estimated 20 million trees are cut down every year to provide books to the U.S. marketplace. Luckily, 65 percent of the 16,700 tons of paper used in the mammoth first U.S. printing of the Harry Potter finale was printed on recycled paper containing at least 30 percent post-consumer waste fiber. If it wasn't I suspect the amount of trees lost this year would be much higher.As the world continues to tilt green these numbers will no longer be acceptable. In an effort to raise awareness and replace the fallen trees Eco-Libris is asking readers to "plant a tree for...