ABC Children's Institute: Thinking 'Inside the Box'

"I just finished doing inventory," said Northshire Bookstore's Jennifer Armstrong,  introducing bestselling Wimpy Kid author Jeff Kinney, who is about to open his own bookstore. "Either there are twice as many here as there should be, or we are missing one. Tonight we have two Jeff Kinneys: bestselling author and rookie bookseller."

Mentor bookseller Valerie Lewis of Hicklebee's in San Jose, Calif., with "rookie bookseller" and Wimpy Kid creator Jeff Kinney.

Jeff Kinney delivered a double-barreled keynote to kick off the ABC Children's Institute, held from April 19-21 at the Hilton in Pasadena, Calif. His characterization of his own journey as author-artist and as "rookie bookseller" became a theme throughout the institute, as he spoke of thinking "Inside the Box" as opposed to the usual approach, outside the box.

He came across the concept during an "Innovation Strategies" meeting for Poptropica--the site where he first introduced the Wimpy Kid--in a job he holds to this day ("for the health-care benefits," Kinney explained). There he discovered the book Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity. Authors Drew Boyd and Jacob Goldenberg argue that thinking "outside the box" encourages making analogies to things that have nothing to do with your products, services or processes. "We believe just the opposite," they write. "More innovation... happens when you work inside your familiar world (yes, inside the box)."

Kinney cited an example of "innovation by division," the timeshare. Take the house you have and divide it up by calendar increments. "Innovation by subtraction" would be a phone with no buttons (iPhone); remove the calling feature of the phone and you have the iPod and iPad. Kinney wanted to be a newspaper cartoonist: "Take away the newspaper, take away the talent, pretend I'm a child, and I come up with stick people in a story with no plot."

Wearing his bookseller hat, Jeff Kinney used the same thinking in reverse as he discussed his vision for the bookstore he will open next month in Plainville, Mass. You can subscribe to a music service, type in a song and play it. "It can't get more immediate than that," Kinney said. "As a child, I made a trip to the record store. I looked at the list of what was coming out, I listened to the songs, I talked to someone." His bookstore and café, An Unlikely Story, will stand on the site of Falk's Market, Plainville's general store. After a few snafus (being advised to tear down the original building, and discovering that the water table was five feet higher than expected), Kinney is building the bookstore with reclaimed wood from the Nutty Buddy ice cream factory floors (which closed in 1980) and incorporating as decor the signs that originally hung on the porch of Falk's Market--in essence, reinventing the inside of the box.

(l-r.) Mac Barnett; Cathy Berner and Valerie Koehler of Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston; and Jory John.

On Monday morning, Mac Barnett and Jory John similarly encouraged booksellers to rethink the "inside of the box." The co-authors of The Terrible Two (Abrams) met while John was volunteering at 826 Valencia Street in San Francisco, Calif., which was founded by Dave Eggers, who also founded McSweeney's Publishing, where Barnett was working. 826 Valencia Street's primary purpose is to tutor children; the organization has seven chapters and serves 32,000 kids each year. But its location on Valencia Street necessitated that it also be a retail space, so they opened a pirate supply store to comply with city code, and it's the main source of funding for the 826 tutoring program.

John and Barnett spoke of 826 as a hybrid of community space, retail space and art space, and its "improvisational" nature. They realized the upstairs space was unused before drop-in tutoring began at 2:30, so they opened it to school field trips featuring guest speakers such as authors and artists. They create quarterly chat books with 826's binding machine and hold a release party each time a book is published. One of their most celebrated is Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country: Kids' Letters to President Obama, written by the students and edited by John. Tutoring ends at 5:30, so they hold workshops from 6-8 p.m. The student newspaper staff meets on Wednesdays, where they've hosted journalists from the Los Angeles Times and local food critics. They use the walls as rotating art space for local artists.

John and Barnett urged booksellers to start with something they could use and in which they have expertise: hold a workshop for kids on writing shelf-talkers. Tell them what makes a strong shelf-talker. Ask them to revise. You may just raise the next generation of booksellers. --Jennifer M. Brown

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