Yesterday morning, at the seventh annual ABC Children's Institute underway in Pittsburgh, Pa., ABA president Jamie Fiocco welcomed a ballroom full of children's booksellers and publishing professionals to the opening keynote. After a quick word from Dan Verdick, director of national sales at this year's sponsor, Baker & Taylor Publishing Services, Fiocco again took the stage to declare Ci7 the biggest institute yet: with 62 scholarships awarded, there are 330 booksellers (more than half of whom are first-time attendees) from 230 stores in attendance.
Retiring ABA CEO Oren Teicher, attending his last Children's Institute, took the stage to introduce Ann Patchett, saying that the "narrative about our speaker" parallels that of the past decade of independent bookselling. Sad that her town had no independent bookstore, Patchett joined forces with business partner Karen Hayes to build Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tenn. Eight years later, Parnassus "has become one of America's most cherished bookstores." Patchett joined Teicher on stage, and the audience gave him a standing ovation as the two hugged.
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| Anne Patchett at Ci7 | |
"I never thought I was ever going into retail," Patchett said in her friendly, upbeat speech. "I just saw it as a civic duty." In November of 2011, she and Hayes decided to be 50/50 partners in the business--Hayes would run it and Patchett would pay for everything. "The benefits to me have been almost incalculable," Patchett said. One benefit is the ways in which owning a bookstore has changed how she reads. Before Parnassus, reading was about "filling in the gaps" in her education, bouncing around from work to work, plugging up any perceived holes in her literary knowledge. (An understandable focus considering, she related, that she did not learn to read until the third grade.) Now, "all I read are books that haven't been published. [People ask me] 'What are you reading?' " Patchett said with a laugh. "It's not gonna help you." But reading so many upcoming titles taught her something 25 years of writing hadn't: "Fiction has fashion."
Also because of the bookstore, Patchett met Robin Preiss Glasser, best known for her illustrative work in the Fancy Nancy series. Glasser, who had recently put the Fancy Nancy series to rest, asked Patchett if she had ever considered writing for children. No, she said, "I don't have children. I don't know children. I don't actually feel comfortable with children." But, after a brief picture book lesson from Glasser, Patchett went home and wrote a picture book. And another. And yet another. While still writing her adult works, she started a practice of "winding down" from the day by writing a picture book. With children's stories on her mind, she watched news coverage of Pennsylvania's 2018 congressional district special election. When Conor Lamb's win was announced, someone was shown holding a sign proclaiming the election a "Lambslide." With that image, Patchett's first published children's book, Lambslide (HarperCollins), illustrated by Glasser, was born.
Since then, she's toured with Glasser and learned the ins and outs of talking to and working with children, and she realized, "Children made me uncomfortable because I was uncomfortable as a child." As an adult author, the book tour was always a chore--now, she said, donning a headband with lamb ears attached, "I am Robin Preiss Glasser's sidekick." Personal growth, professional discovery, children and children's books.... All thanks to owning an independent bookstore.
"It's always dire times," Patchett said of contemporary bookselling, "Booksellers as a whole are like Depression Era babies." Even when things are good, she joked, we can't admit it. "If you have a good year," she implored the audience, "celebrate it." "You're doing God's work... I am so proud to be a member of your ranks."