"We have better events, we have a highly educated, well-read staff, we pride ourselves in noticing and responding to the needs of our community. For us, being a part of our community comes first. We contribute to local social service organizations, we give book talks to schoolteachers, we invite local schoolchildren to visit our store, we have story time once a week, we partner with other organizations and businesses for our events, we never stop talking about the importance of books to sustaining culture. And we know that a business must be profitable to stay around, and we have worked very hard to find ways to do this."--Gayle Shanks, co-founder and co-owner of Changing Hands bookstore, Tempe, Ariz., in an Arizona Republic Q&A on the occasion of the store's 32nd birthday explaining how the store competes.

Betty and Rhett Jackson, who founded the Happy Bookseller in Columbia, S.C., in 1975, will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the ABA at the Celebration of Bookselling at BEA. The award, given only once before (to Joyce Meskis of the Tattered Cover in Denver, Colo.), will be presented by the Jacksons' friend and fellow South Carolinian Pat Conroy. Rhett and Betty sold the store in 2003. Betty continues to work there, while these days Rhett is more of a Happy Retired Bookseller. Rhett is also a former ABA president. For more information, check out the ABA Web site.

Congratulations to the ABA for giving the Jacksons the award and the Jacksons themselves, two of the most gracious, thoughtful, amusing booksellers around.

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Prompted by the announcement that Michael Powell will begin handing over management of Powell's Books to his daughter, Emily, the Oregonian has run several tributes to Powell and the store. An editorial included this story:

"Thirteen years ago, a Portland-area mother and daughter made their first trip to Powell's, where they stumbled on a magical book the mother hadn't seen since childhood, Richard Halliburton's Complete Book of Marvels. It was a fairy-tale moment--routine at Powell's. The store is as deliberately tantalizing as a labyrinth. You're meant to turn around, bump into old books, and old selves, while making the acquaintance of new ones. Getting lost, if you can, is the whole point."

And another tribute to Powell's noted its power as a tourist draw. Elizabeth Burnett, executive director of Portland Literary Arts, told the paper: "I think Powell's is our Eiffel Tower, and anyone who comes here has to see it."

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About the only people in the industry happy about the tentative approval of HMV's probably takeover of Ottakar's and its merger with the Waterstone's division are stock analysts and HMV executives, according to a Guardian story. Otherwise, authors, independent booksellers, community groups and others complain.

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The group of private equity companies seeking to buy VNU has formed Valcon Acquisition to pursue the bid and today will release documents explaining the $9 billion purchase price, according to today's Wall Street Journal. Several other interested parties have apparently backed out. VNU owns, among many other things, Nielsen BookScan, the Book Standard, Kirkus Reviews, the Bookseller and Watson-Guptill.

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Tomorrow marks a milestone in movie downloads. For the first time, with the DVD release of Brokeback Mountain, fans will be able to buy and download simultaneously with DVD release a major studio movie legally onto their computers, the Wall Street Journal reported. The service is offered though Movielink, a studio joint venture, which has allowed downloaded rentals. One major limitation: viewing will not yet be possible on DVD players, only computers.

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The Patriot-News has an update on Harrisburg, Pa.'s Midtown Scholar Bookstore, which recently expanded (Shelf Awareness, February 6).

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The Jackson-Madison County Library system in Tennessee is considering three bids to operate the system, one from management and two from private companies, according to the Jackson Sun. At least one of the private bidders is proposing opening a branch--consisting of a library, bookstore and café--in the former Davis-Kidd Booksellers store that closed last year and said it has had "preliminary discussions" with Davis-Kidd owner Joseph-Beth Booksellers.

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The Rogers Public Library, Rogers, Ark., and the Barnes & Noble in Rogers are celebrating National Poetry Month by sponsoring a poetry contest, the Northwest Arkansas News reported. Contest categories are for adults, teens and children.

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In November, Barnes & Noble plans to open a new store at 10317 Silverdale Way Northwest in Silverdale, Wash., near Seattle. When the store opens, B&N's existing store at 3108 Northwest Randall Way in Silverdale will close. The new store will have the usual close to 200,000 book, music, movie and magazine titles and a café.

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V for Vendetta the movie now has box office sales of more than $56 million. As a result, the graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd on which it's based was in the top 10 on the BookScan adult fiction trade paperback list for the week ending March 26. Originally published as a trade paperback in 1988 by DC Comics, the book now has more than 500,000 copies in print.

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The Whittier Daily News chronicles how several members of the Friends of the Whittier Library Bookstore in Whittier, Calif., tracked down the owner of jewelry found in a hollowed-out section of a donated book--with few clues to go on.

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The Campaign for Reader Privacy, which is sponsored by the ABA, ALA, AAP and Pen American Center, has lodged a protest against President Bush, who in a "signing statement" made when he signed a reauthorization of the Patriot Act, seemed to say that he could ignore whatever he wanted in the law, particularly the disclosure aspects.

The President has issued such signing statements for a variety of laws that he apparently won't necessarily abide by. Similarly his signing statement on the bill sponsored by Senator John McCain banning torture indicated that the president believes he can sometimes allow torture.

"The oversight provisions of the re-authorization bill are an important safeguard in protecting reader privacy," Oren Teicher, COO of the ABA, said in a statement. "It is simply outrageous that the President thinks he can choose the sections of the law he wants to enforce and ignore the rest.

For his part, Michael Gorman, president of the ALA, said, "We call on those senators who negotiated the Patriot compromise legislation to hold the executive branch accountable to the American people."

PublicAffairs founder and editor-at-large Peter Osnos has taken a major step in his goal of offering readers a range of choice for how they read serious nonfiction (Shelf Awareness, August 19): with help from a group of publishers, booksellers and associations, he has formed the Caravan Project, which aims "to use existing and emerging technologies to increase the availability and variety of format of serious nonfiction books across all channels for sales and distribution, in stores and online."

Early next year, as the first example of what it plans to do, the Project will make available about 24 titles in traditional hardcover or paperback, as well as e-book and audiobook versions (both available for download in their entirety or on a chapter basis). A large-print POD version may also be available.

The current, April 10 issue of Business Week has a long story about the project.

The Caravan Project is based at the University of North Carolina Press. Other nonprofit publisher participants are Beacon Press, the New Press, the University of California Press, Yale University Press and the Council on Foreign Relations Press. Ingram and its Lightning Source subsidiary will provide content management, fulfillment and other services.

Caravan is also working with the ABA and some of its members individually, including R.J. Julia Bookseller, Madison, Conn., Politics and Prose, Washington, D.C., and Books & Books, Coral Gables, Fla. Some Borders stores will participate in the project, and the board of the Association of American University Presses has endorsed Caravan. The New York Public Library may make the multiple formats available in test locations.

Osnos will be executive director of the Caravan Project. Kate Douglas Torrey, director of UNC Press, is chair of Caravan's board of publishers. Della Mancuso, a former Random House production executive, and Carie Freimuth, a former Random House and HarperCollins marketing executive, are consultants.

Caravan is being funded by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation and Osnos personally is being supported by the Century Foundation, where he is a senior fellow for media.

This morning Good Morning America welcomes an unusual Da Vinci Code piggybacker, Stephen Lanzalotta, author of The Diet Code: Revolutionary Weight Loss Secrets From Da Vinci and the Golden Ratio (Warner Wellness, $24.95, 0446578878).

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This morning the Today Show volleys with Martina Navratilova, author of Shape Your Self: My 6-Step Diet and Fitness Plan for Achieving Your Personal Best Whatever Your Age--Or Your Challenge (Rodale, $27.95, 1594862826). Navratilova will also be playing on the Early Show tomorrow.

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Today on the Early Show, Mary Higgins Clark talks about her latest thriller, Two Little Girls in Blue (S&S, $25.95, 0743264908).

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Today on Imus in the Morning: Jon Meacham, author of American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers and the Making of a Nation (Random House, $23.95, 1400065550).

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Today Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, author of The Battle For Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purpose (Palgrave Macmillan, $24.95, 1403971749), reports for publicity duty on NPR's All Things Considered. Yesterday Zinni, in charge of U.S. Central Command from 1997 to 2000, got press for his appearance on Meet the Press, when he called for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation.

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Tonight the Daily Show with Jon Stewart goofs with Office "manager" Ricky Gervais, author of Flanimals sequel, More Flanimals (Putnam, $15.99, 0399246053).

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Tonight on the Charlie Rose Show, guest host Bill Moyers talks with Daniel C. Dennett, philosophy professor and author of Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Viking, $25.95, 067003472X).

The winners of the 2006 E.B. White Read Aloud Awards, sponsored by the Association of Booksellers for Children and awarded in two categories for the first time, are:

Picture Book:

If I Built a Car written and illustrated by Chris Van Dusen (Penguin, $15.99). ABC commented: "Young Jack, the hero of this bright, rollicking story, won over the awards committee with his eye-opening tour of the car he'd like to build. There's a snack bar, a pool, and even a robot chauffeur named Robert. Chris Van Dusen's lively illustrations and rhyming couplets celebrate the boundless imagination of a boy who thinks big--REALLY big! The committee loved the universal appeal of this book for children of all ages."

Notified on his birthday that he had won, Van Dusen told ABC that he will accept the award with, among other family members, his son Tucker, whose "Jack-like" handwriting graces the book's endpapers.

Older Readers:

Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles (Harcourt, $16). ABC said: "This novel received numerous nominations from booksellers all over the country, who praised its warmth, humor, and grace in dealing with challenging material. Described by one bookseller as 'Six Feet Under meets Harper Lee,' the novel's ten-year-old heroine, Comfort Snowberger, has attended 247 funerals. But that's not surprising, considering that her family runs the town funeral home. Comfort knows how to deal with loss, or so she thinks, but life is full of surprises, and the biggest one of all she finds is learning about herself. The committee loved this sensitive and charming look at family, love, and life in all its 'messy glory.' "

Wiles told ABC that the award was especially touching because White had been a major inspiration. "I was an 18-year-old single mother who wanted to be a writer and who found her first and most important teacher in an essayist whose books were on the shelves of the D.C. Public Library:  E.B. White. I studied his work religiously and he taught me so much. As White tells us in Charlotte's Web: 'It's not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.' White was both of those things to me, especially in those early, scary years of my becoming a parent, an adult, and a writer. I am forever grateful to White--and to the ABC."

The awards will be presented during ABC's annual Evening with Children's Booksellers--Secret Garden Auction and Dinner on Thursday, May 18, during BEA.

Appearing next week in paperback:

Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss (Gotham, $11, 1592402038). The surprise bestseller by a caretaker of the English language.

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Saturday by Ian McEwan (Knopf, $14.95, 1400076196). An intense post-September 11 novel.

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True Believer by Nicholas Sparks (Warner, $12.95, 044669651X). A scientist tries to debunk another series of paranormal events in North Carolina but an unexpected attraction leads to sparks with a local librarian.

From last week's Book Sense bestseller lists, available at booksense.com, here are the recommended titles, which are also Book Sense Picks:

Hardcover

The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Era that Gave the World Impressionism by Ross King (Walker, $28, 0802714668). "Picture yourself in Paris in 1863 viewing the famous, and scandalous, exhibition of the Salon des Refusés, paintings from artists who were scorned by the artistic establishment. So embattled were the players it was like war, and Ross King shows 'that the real contest was not about art but about how to see the world.'"--Barbara Peters, The Poisoned Pen, Scottsdale, Ariz.

Rose of No Man's Land by Michelle Tea (MacAdam/Cage, $22, 1596921609). "Meet Trish, whose mom thinks she should feel lucky that her mom's live-in boyfriend doesn't try to molest her. Nonetheless, Trish manages to observe the squalor of her life rather than wallow in it, and, when she meets Rose, another misfit in their cultural wasteland, Trish bursts out of her shell and flies. A quirky story of growing up."--Susan Taylor, Wellesley Booksmith, Wellesley, Mass.

Paperback

Lucky Dog by Mark Barrowcliffe (St. Martin's Griffin, $13.95, 0312342802). "This is a side-splitting tale about a talking dog named Reg and the man he helps to stand up for himself. This is a book you don't want to miss with a dog you would love to have."--Daniel Thomas, Browsing Bison Books, Deer Lodge, Mont.

For Children Up to Age 8

The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, illustrated by Roberto Innocenti (Creative Editions, $19.95, 1568461909). "Here's the original 1881 story, sharp and witty, and with exquisite illustrations. My pulse quickens each time I look at Innocenti's richly detailed, beautiful, and frightening artwork. This will be a book for a child to keep and treasure for years."--Jean Matthews, Chapter One Book Store, Hamilton, Mont.

Beyond the Great Mountains: A Visual Poem About China by Ed Young (Chronicle, $17.95, 0811843432). "Gorgeous visuals with simple words make this an excellent introduction to Chinese culture for young children."--Candy Pearson, Apple Blossom Books, Oshkosh, Wis.

[Many thanks to Book Sense and the ABA!]