Reading with... Stephanie Appell

photo: Nicole Brinkley

Stephanie Appell has lived in eight states and recently moved near Detroit, Mich. She has worked as a video store clerk, a youth services librarian with the Austin Public Library, director of books and events for young readers at Parnassus Books, and an associate editor at BookPage. Now she copyedits and occasionally reviews children's and YA books for Shelf Awareness. Her favorite punctuation mark is an ampersand, and she tends to overuse parentheses. She has the neatest handwriting you've ever seen.

On your nightstand now:

T. Kingfisher's A Sorceress Comes to Call. My whole TBR is increasingly drawn from the fact checking I do for Shelf Awareness. I know I want to read a book when I find myself continuing to read after I've verified a fact or when I catch myself thinking, "Try not to read too much so you can come back to this later and really enjoy it."

Favorite book when you were a child:

I am probably the person I am today, in so many ways, because of the influence of Tamora Pierce. When she received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for her "significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature" in 2013, I shrieked so loudly that she probably heard me, despite the hundreds of miles between us.

Your top five authors:

Samira Ahmed, Mac Barnett, Deb Caletti, Kristin Cashore, Kelly Loy Gilbert, Melina Marchetta, Tamora Pierce, Laura Ruby, Sabaa Tahir, Megan Whalen Turner, Renée Watson, Ibi Zoboi. Sorry, I had to go to 12. If any of these folks ever decided to publish their grocery lists, I would still want to read them.

Book you've faked reading:

Too many to count. I owe my truth to no one.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Also too many to count. Being a book evangelist is an occupational hazard when you're a bookseller.

Book you've bought for the cover:

The idea of buying a book "for the cover" is a false premise. In the context of new books, a book cover--spine included--is just a billboard trying to interpellate (to borrow a term from Louis Althusser) its intended purchaser/consumer based on market trends at the time of publication. We all buy books "for the cover," and anyone who disagrees is either naïve or lying. That said, a few of my all-time favorite covers--of books I own, all hardcover editions--include Daniel Nayeri's Everything Sad Is Untrue (jacket art by David Curtis, design by Semadar Megged and Elizabeth Parisi); Deb Caletti's A Heart in a Body in the World (jacket art by Daniel Stolle, design by Sarah Creech); Rachel Hartman's Seraphina (jacket art by Andrew Davidson, design by Heather Palisi); and Libba Bray's The Diviners (jacket design by Gail Doobinin). That last one had its cover concept redesigned twice over the course of a four-book series, and if I could go back in space and time and scold whoever made the call to deviate from the initial concept, I would.

Book you hid from your parents:

They'll probably read this, so I'm taking these secrets to my grave.

Book that changed your life:

Literary Fiction: An Anthology, second edition, edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Imagine 18-year-old Steph, a freshman in college, reading critical theory for the first time. It broke my brain in the best way.

Favorite line from a book:

"Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs." --George Eliot, Middlemarch

Five books you'll never part with:

One of my proudest achievements while at Parnassus was successfully pitching to host Tamora Pierce on one of three tour stops for Tortall: A Spy's Guide. Over the years, my partner had diligently tracked down first editions (though, I will note, not first printings--we don't have that kind of money) of all of Pierce's books, and she very patiently signed every single one for me. Although there are far more than five of them, they are the first objects I would grab if my apartment ever caught fire.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Right now it's Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is pretty high up on the list too.

Five picture book illustrators whose work renders you speechless:

Victo Ngai, Michaela Goade, Devon Holzwarth, Melissa Sweet, C.G. Esperanza

One perfect picture book:

Philip C. Stead and Erin E. Stead's Bear Has a Story to Tell. I have a weakness for all picture books about bears (and mice, and characters having bad days) dating back to my relatively brief time as a youth services librarian at the Austin Public Library, and this is one of the best. There are so few pleasures in life sweeter and rarer than a truly perfect picture book.

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