Our Day with the Book Fairies

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On Wednesday we tried something new! We partnered with the Book Fairies to hide copies of Pauline Holdstock’s new novel, Here I Am! across North America.

Here I Am! is about a little boy named Frankie who runs away from home and stows away on a ship when his mother dies and he doesn’t know what to do. We thought this was the perfect book to use in a continent-wide treasure hunt using the hashtags #WheresFrankie and #FindFrankie. We even joined in the fun and hid some copies around Windsor!

Buy your copy of Here I Am! now.

Check out the Book Fairies’ blog post.

 

   

 

 

 

 

Bookseller Praise for Here I Am!

“You will find that this high-seas adventure is one of the most absorbing books of the year. I loved every moment. Oh! I almost forgot to tell you: This book might remind you of past favorites, but it will be one that you won’t soon forget.”
—Shannon Alden, Literati Bookstore (Ann Arbor, MI)

“This captivating novel will surely draw comparisons to Emma Donoghue’s Room and Mark Haddon’s Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, and it should; it’s every bit as good as those wonderful books, but in no way imitative. The young narrator’s voice is his own, the story is guaranteed to hook the reader immediately, and the characters’ lively humanity makes Here I Am! a delightfully satisfying read. Very highly recommended!”
—Carol Schneck Varne, Schuler Books (Grand Rapids, MI)

“A highly intelligent six-year-old who has difficulty communicating tries repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, to tell a dullard, dismissive teacher that his mother is dead. Desperate to be heard, Frankie sneaks onto a cruise ship that he thinks will take him to his traveling father. Oops, wrong ship. But Frankie finds a kindred soul or two in a world where so few people seem capable of listening. Like me, you might find your own attentiveness enhanced by this big-hearted story.”
—Kay Wosewick, Boswell Book Company (Milwaukee, WI)

“When new books constantly fight for my attention, it takes something special to be distinct. Pauline Holdstock has achieved this miracle. The narrative voice of 6 year old Frankie is what makes this a stand out. Frankie has the naivete of the narrator in ONLY CHILD by Rhiannon Navin, combined with the interesting perspective of a boy on the spectrum like THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHTIME. When Frankie’s mother dies, he is thrust into a situation beyond his comprehension, and into a world that fails to understand him. Frankie’s journey is a stunning tribute to perseverance and will melt your heart. HERE I AM! is a captivating winner.”
—Pamela Klinger-Horn, Excelsior Bay Books (Excelsior, MN)

“Put down what you are reading and pick up Here I Am! by Pauline Holdstock and read it! Frankie is 6 and is not a normal child. His teachers and parents don’t know how to deal with him and one day he runs away and ends up on an ocean liner headed for America. His trip, how he gets back, and Frankie himself makes for a fabulous story. I couldn’t put this one down.”
—Beth Carpenter, The Country Bookshop (Southern Pines, NC)

“I adored HERE I AM, and am now frankly pressuring everyone I know to start reading it right this minute so that we can have a love-fest. The story — child stows away on an ocean liner! — is absurd but oddly inevitable in the telling, and the characters are humanely drawn, even the horribly flawed ones. Fans of Eleanor Oliphant will love the clear-eyed pragmatism of our six-year-old hero, who faces the impossible and somehow just keeps going.”
—Christie Olson Day, Gallery Bookshop (Mendocino, CA)

“I LOVE the distinctly written, very British characters who fill out the plotline of Here I Am! The plot unfolds around the discovery of a death, and although the tale is told mostly by a resourceful six year old, short interludes told by adults ground the story in the starkly mundane fact of mortality. The profound beauty, refreshing delight in small things, and stark realities are balanced in a way that creates a riveting, dynamic, and at times very funny read. This book has stayed with me.”
—Kathleen Johnson, Prairie Lights Bookshop (Iowa City, IA)

Excerpt from How to Die by Ray Robertson in the Globe and Mail!

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An excerpt from Ray Robertson’s How to Die: A Book About Being Alive is in the Globe and Mail this weekend. It is available to read online now!

A radical revaluation of how contemporary society perceives death—and a literary tourist’s argument for how it can make us happy.

“He who would teach men to die would teach them to live,” writes Montaigne in Essais, and in How to Die, Ray Robertson takes up the challenge, arguing that the active and intentional consideration of death is essential to our ability to value life. An absorbing excursion through some of Western literature’s most compelling works on the subject of death and a selfhelp book for people who hate self-help, How to Die is an anecdote-driven argument for cultivating a better understanding of death in the belief that, if we do, we’ll know more about what it means to live meaningfully.

Ray also appeared on Global TV’s Morning Show in January. Click on the image below to watch the interview:

 

“While How to Die is a slim book, it offers some hefty insights, leavened with frequent, self-effacing humour. There are numerous passages here which, while quick to read (the book is very accessible, despite its philosophical bona fides), nonetheless take hours to fully internalize … Brilliant.”
—Robert J. Wiersema, Toronto Star

 

 

 

 

A shout out to How to Die in Toronto Life:

 

Click the image below to watch Ray’s interview with Annette Hamm on CHCH’s Morning Live:

Want to hear more from Ray? Read his interviews in the Windsor Star, Chatham Daily News, or Queen’s Journal. Listen to his interview on CBC Windsor Morning.

Want to read the book? Buy it here!

 

About Ray Robertson:

Ray Robertson is the author of the novels Home Movies, Heroes, Moody Food, Gently Down the Stream, What Happened Later, David, I Was There The Night He Died, and 1979 as well as the non-fiction collections Lives of the Poets (with Guitars), Mental Hygiene: Essays on Writers and Writing and Why Not? Fifteen Reasons to Live, which was short-listed for the Hilary Weston Prize for non-fiction and long-listed for the Charles Taylor Prize for non-fiction. Born and raised in Southwestern Ontario, he lives in Toronto.

 

 

Biblioasis at Winter Institute 2020 in Baltimore

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Every year the American Booksellers Association (ABA) puts on a big convention for booksellers to meet one another, talk with publishers, and share tricks of the trade. This year it was in Baltimore, Maryland, and Biblioasis had a blast. Booksellers are pretty much our favourite people in the world, so we are always excited when we get a chance to meet them face to face and share with them the books we’re excited about for the year. We brought with us ARCs for 2020 titles and buttons, as we often do, but this year we made something a little bit different … bookseller trading cards!

Because booksellers are our heroes, we decided to show our appreciation by creating our first deck of nine bookseller trading cards, complete with stats, stickers, and gum. Artist Owen Swain illustrated the cards, and our Managing Editor, Vanessa, designed the cards and found the stats. We sat around our front table wrapping them up and chewing bubble gum during the week preceding Winter Institute.

And when they got there, they made a splash. Shelf Awareness tweeted about them and wrote about us in their newsletter. Lit Hub wrote about us, saying “Do you even love books if you haven’t collected all of these independent bookseller cards?” Then Ron Charles included a mention about them in his Washington Post newsletter “Book Club.”

We had such fun making them and watching everyone trade them. We can’t wait for our next series, coming Indie Bookseller Day 2020! This series will soon be available for purchase on our website.

 

Trading in action!

James Crossley signing his card.